Dr Greg Foliente of CSIRO Sustainable Built Environment has won the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) 2003 James Croes Medal for his work on developing a new design procedure for timber joints with Australian Pine, and leading international efforts to improve reliability-based design of joints in timber construction.
The award was won in conjunction with Professor Ian Smith of the University of New Brunswick (Canada) for their joint paper, "Load and resistance factor design of timber joints: international practice and future direction".
The paper looks at the scope of the work required to elevate the load and resistance factor design (LRFD) of joints to a comparative level to the LRFD of timber members.
Dr Foliente says, "While several countries have implemented reliability concepts in the design of wood members, no code in the world has implemented proper reliability-based design for the design of timber joints".
"The importance of this has become apparent after assessments of timber buildings damaged after extreme events such as earthquakes and tropical cyclones, which often point to the inadequate performance of connections as the primary cause of failure."
The paper was published in the ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering in 2002. The James Croes Medal is considered one of ASCE's most distinguished awards, with a special focus on engineering science. Dr Foliente and Professor Smith have been invited to accept the award during the ASCE National Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, in mid-November 2003.
Dr Foliente is a CSIRO Team Leader and Principal Research Scientist. He is also the Technical Director of the CSIRO Structures Laboratory and Whole Building Test Facility in Highett, Melbourne.
Dr Foliente and his team also conduct research into performance-based building, service life performance prediction, reliability-based infrastructure asset management, structural dynamics and earthquake engineering. - Construction Contractor