Prof. Chung-Che CHOU of Civil Eng. Receives 2021 Award for Excellent Technology Transfers, MOST

Minister Tsung-Tsong WU (吳政忠) of MOST presents 2021 Award for Excellent Technology Transfers to Prof. Chung-Che CHOU (周中哲)

Prof. Chung-Che CHOU (周中哲) from Civil Engineering, College of Engineering leads the research team with a new technique “Sandwiched Buckling-Restrained Brace, SBRB” and successfully conducts technology transfer to commercialized application, receiving 2021 Award for Excellent Technology Transfers, MOST. In addition to the domestic and foreign patent layout and technology transfer funds, this technology has been used in totally 9 domestic and foreign engineering application cases from 2014 to 2021 with derivative royalties, which is a successful model of technology transfer. Prof. Chou states that Taiwan is located in the Circum-Pacific seismic belt and is always experiencing the threat of earthquakes. This research and development of innovative steel-structure seismic prevention technology can ensure residential safety and economic development.

The SBRB technique is long-term funded by MOST projects and supported by former Director Generals of The National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering (NCREE): Prof. Keh-Chyuan TSAI (蔡克銓), Prof. Kuo-Chun CHANG (張國鎮), and Prof. Shyh-Jiann HWANG (黃世建). This innovative technique (1) uses bolts to connect the core member and the restraining member like the way making sandwiches, which can simplify factory production without concrete filling (according to the authorized steel structure factory, it saves about 50% production time labor costs), and (2) provides an opportunity for on-site disassembly and inspection after the earthquake and the reuse of the brace components (about 40% cost of the entire brace), and the whole brace can be used again to achieve sustainable environmental protection and circular economy benefits.

This new type of BRB technique has been manufactured and applied to many large domestic steel structures and construction plants such as Taiwan’s first suspended building structure- Kaohsiung Main Public Library (高雄市立圖書總館), Headquarter of Winbond Electronics Corporation in Hsinchu (華邦電子總部), the highest building of  FORWORLD ENTERPRISE (馥華艾美) in Banqiao, New Taipei City, Headquarter of CHEN YEH CHEMICAL WORKS, LTD. (振業化工總部), the sports center of Yanping High School (台北市延平中學), the social housing in Xinyi District, Taipei City (廣慈博愛園區D標社宅大樓), Headquarter of Yuanta Financial Holding (元大金控大樓), and the Gansu Science and Technology Museum (甘肅蘭州科技博物館). The SBRB technique applied to Kaohsiung Main Public Library provids the best earthquake-resistant mechanism for the structure to resist the 2016 Kaohsiung Meinong earthquake (Rich Scale 6.6). The related research works have been cited more than 560 times by international scholars.