Overview of the Building Nonstructural Components and Systems (BNCS) Project

A unique collaboration between academia, government, and industry, the Building Nonstructural Components and Systems [BNCS] project, was formed to contribute to the understanding of earthquake and post-earthquake fire resiliency of nonstructural components and systems. The centerpiece of this effort -- full-scale shake table and live fire testing of a five-story reinforced concrete building fully outfitted with nonstructural components and systems -- will contribute a wealth of high-resolution physical data to the earthquake and fire engineering communities and provide direct input to modeling tools, future design codes and construction practices. This paper is the first in a session devoted to this project, providing an overview of its scope, details of the experimental program, and preliminary summary of major results from the testing. Four other papers in the session focus on response of the major nonstructural components and systems (Pantoli et al., 2013a), system identification (Astroza et al., 2013), pre-test numerical modeling (Wang et al., 2013), and fire test phase results (Meacham et al., 2013).