Beyond building code with cold-formed steel

Note: This podcast interview was recorded before the CFS10 shake table tests, which took place in June and July of 2025. In this episode, earthquake engineers Tara Hutchinson, of UC San Diego, and Ben Schafer, of Johns Hopkins University, discuss the long-term nature of seismic engineering research. The CFS10 structure currently on the UC San Diego shake table represents over a decade of steel-framed component testing. On the strength of that research, Hutchinson and Schafer built the CFS10 structure to ten stories, four floors above current building code. That’s an unabashed goal of the landmark CFS10 project: to advance building code for steel-framed buildings in seismic zones.