Benjamin W. Schafer
Swirnow Family Scholar
Congratulations to Professor Ben Schafer, who, with the help of funding by a National Science Foundation grant, has created the Steel Diaphragm Innovation Initiative.
This multi-year industry-academic partnership is dedicated to innovation in the application, modeling, and design of building floors and roofs utilizing structural systems with steel. Its goal is to advance the seismic performance of steel floor and roof diaphragms utilized in steel buildings through better understanding of diaphragm-structure interaction, new design approaches, and new three-dimensional modeling tools that provided enhanced capabilities to designers utilizing steel diaphragms in their building systems. It is managed by the Cold-Formed Steel Research Consortium, of which Prof. Schafer is the director.
SDII was created through collaboration between multiple entities within industry and academics. Current partners include:
American Iron and Steel Institute
American Institute of Steel Construction
Johns Hopkins University
Metal Building Manufacturers Association
Northeastern University
Steel Deck Institute
Steel Joist Institute
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Walter P. Moore
To learn more about SDII or become involved with the effort, visit http://steeli.org/.