Background
An engineering firm was retained to seismically retrofit a heritage building with an irregular structural layout that fell outside the configurations addressed by standard seismic retrofit guidelines.
The Challenge
Standard retrofit methods assumed regular structural geometries, and it was unclear whether any combination of reinforcement techniques could achieve the required seismic performance without compromising the building’s heritage structural elements.
Technological Uncertainty
It was not known in advance whether a retrofit approach could meet current seismic performance targets given the building’s irregular geometry and heritage constraints, or whether the interaction between reinforced and original structural elements could be reliably predicted using standard analysis methods.
Experimental Development
The team developed and tested multiple structural modeling approaches to predict the building’s seismic response, iterating on reinforcement configurations and validating predictions against instrumented load testing on representative structural elements.
What Failed?
An initial reinforcement configuration based on standard retrofit guidance produced unpredictable load paths in structural modeling, revealing that the irregular geometry required a custom analysis approach rather than standard code-based methods.
Technological Advancement
The team developed a custom structural analysis and reinforcement approach validated through load testing, generating new engineering knowledge about seismic retrofit performance for irregular heritage structures not addressed by standard guidelines.
Potentially Relevant SR&ED Activities
- Development of custom structural modeling approaches for irregular geometry
- Iterative reinforcement configuration testing and load validation
- Comparative analysis of predicted versus tested structural response
What Would Generally Not Qualify
Applying the finalized, validated retrofit design to construction using standard construction methods would be routine implementation and would not itself qualify.
Documentation
Structural modeling iterations, load test results, engineering analysis reports comparing predicted and tested performance, and design change records would support this claim.
