Transportation induced damage to prefabricated structure

Overview

Prefabrication is a modern construction technology that has been increasingly adopted in construction industry. Since prefabricated structural elements are normally bulky and brittle, damage and failure of structural components has been constantly reported during transportation and lifting processes when elements are delivered from prefabrication workshop to construction site. This research is proposed to investigate the response and damage pattern of prefabricated structures due to vibration during transportation and lifting processes, aiming to derive a simplified analysis and design method for “safe” transportation of prefabricated structures and possible mitigation techniques to reduce and eliminate transportation induced vibration.

Key outcomes

• Dynamic analysis of multi-axle truck models
• Dynamic test on a real modular house delivered from prefab warehouse to construction site.
• Analytical solution of the modular house model and the comparison between the test results.

Research team

• Yijun Chen
• Prof Hong Hao
• Dr Xihong Zhang
• Dr Kaiming Bi

Research partners and collaborators

• Fleetwood Australia
• Legacy Living Laboratory