In Brea, Morley recently applied seismic technology learned from structural failures of roadway bridges during the 1994 Northridge quake. Working on the ground floor of the occupied structure, our crews worked in confined spaces to reinforce dozens of existing columns in the bank's 480,000 square foot Operations Center. The center provides twenty-four hour data processing critical to daily operations of the bank's business. Morley workers hoist a steel column jacket into place over the existing reinforced concrete column. The void between the steel jacket and the column will then be filled with epoxy injected through a small valve.
Most readers are familiar with base isolator technology.
However, it is important to know that engineers continue to improve this technology. Recent advances integrate super-resilient metals into the high density rubber bases to more efficiently dissipate the heat and motion energy created by an earthquake. Morley will place such isolators under the new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels , now in design for the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles . The cathedral's structural engineer, Nabih Youssef , will also incorporate seismic dampers which will work in concert with the isolators, to help cope with large quakes and displacements. Structural engineers are William Taylor and Douglas Way .