NUSTians win 1st National Competition on Sustainable Design of Large Span Buildings
We are proud to announce that NUSTians Sikandar Ali Khokhar, Shahzeb Memon, Touqeer Ahmed, Muhammad Umer Basit from Institute of Civil Engineering (NICE) and Eman Bilal from School of Art Design & Architecture (SADA), have won the “1st National Competition on Sustainable Design of Large Span Buildings” organised by NED University of Engineering & Technology, Karachi (NEDUET) and supported by the Institute of Engineers Pakistan (IEP) Karachi.
They were guided by faculty advisor, Dr Fawad Ahmed Najam and Co-advisor, Dr Rao Arsalan Khushnood of NUST.
The winning team has developed a sustainable and resilient structural design for long-span structures using the Engineered Cementitious Composites (ECC). This novel construction material is a special class of High-Performance Fibre Reinforced Cementitious Composites (HPFRCC) which can exhibit tensile strain-hardening behaviour and tensile ductility contrary to the conventional types of concrete. The sophisticated numerical models of long-span ECC structures were simulated using non-linear dynamic analysis and optimally designed against earthquake and wind excitations.
A total of 30 teams from 12 different universities participated in this competition. The design and simulation results submitted by the NUST team were declared the most cost-effective, resilient, and sustainable under the given environmental excitations including seismic and wind hazards.
We are so proud of this amazing feat and are positive that more such honours await our highly talented and hardworking NUST students in this year and the next to come.