Lessons from Afghanistan: Fulbright Scholar at UB, an Afghan Native, Seeks to Popularize Earthquake-Engineering Technology He Learned While Building

The area along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border that underwent a magnitude 7.2 earthquake last week is one that University at Buffalo graduate student and Fulbright scholar Mustafa Mashal knows well.

Before arriving at UB in 2009, Mashal spent several years working for a prime contractor of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, designing and constructing military bases in the region, home to numerous insurgent groups, for the Afghan National Army and Border Police.

Fortunately, because of the area's sparse population and the temblor's low intensity, it caused minimal damage or disruption in Afghanistan, but it destroyed more than 200 homes near the epicenter in Pakistan.

Mashal says the region's seismicity is well known.

"Afghanistan has a much more severe risk of earthquakes than California does," he says. "Every other month, we have something on the order of a magnitude of more than 7.0 in the Hindu Kush region in northeastern Afghanistan."

The intense and frequent seismicity of this part of the world, especially the 2005 Pakistani earthquake, which killed 80,000 people, helped inspire Mashal to study earthquake engineering to find ways to make homes and buildings safer.

Ultimately, he decided to come to UB to study with renowned professors who conduct research in UB's MCEER (formerly the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research).

Mashal is taking full advantage of the structural engineering curriculum and top-notch research facilities in the UB Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

He also is sharing with classmates and instructors some of the novel things he learned while on the job in various remote Afghanistan regions, which have recently attracted the attention of his professors.

Last semester, one of his class assignments was to pick a building in Buffalo and design a way to retrofit it so it would better stand up to an earthquake. Mashal convinced his team to develop the retrofit with 3-D panels, the technology he learned to use in Afghanistan to quickly construct buildings for military bases.

The key advantage of 3-D panels is that they are strong but lightweight, Mashal says. Not only can they stand up to significant seismic forces, they can resist hurricane force winds as well as blasts.

The 3-D panels consist of an expanded polystyrene core sandwiched between two cover mesh sheets, which are welded together by diagonal connectors that go through the polystyrene core. Two layers of a strong concrete are then applied to both sides of the panel.