B.C. researchers develop spray-on solution to costly quake conundrum
VANCOUVER — It was while flipping through British Columbia’s seismic upgrade guidelines at the beginning of his civil engineering master’s degree that Salman Soleimani-Dashtaki first realized something was amiss.
He noticed that retrofitting schools to protect them from earthquakes almost always involved tearing down and replacing masonry walls — a costly and time-consuming process.
Six years later, the PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia has come up with a form of spray-on concrete that keeps walls in place. Researchers say the concrete will keep schools safe from the most powerful earthquakes and cut the cost of seismic retrofits.
“All my research career has been the same,” Soleimani-Dashtaki said Tuesday. “I try to see where there is a gap and I try to fill and bridge that gap.”