UCLA Engineers Vibrate Abandoned
Building in "Shake Test"
Date: August 10, 2004
Contact: Chris Sutton ( chris@ea.ucla.edu
)
Phone: 310-206-0540
This abandoned building in Sherman Oaks
was the site for several shake tests by UCLA engineers this
summer. |
Sometimes the best way to learn about something
is to experience it. That is the concept behind a series of earthquake
tests conducted this summer at an abandoned office park in Sherman
Oaks.
A team of UCLA earthquake engineers have been
forcibly shaking a former office building, which was damaged in
the 1994 Northridge quake, to better understand how similar buildings
may behave the next time a temblor strikes.
"Opportunities to conduct experiments like
these are rare and are important for understanding more about
structural responses to seismic activity," said John Wallace,
a civil and environmental engineering professor in the UCLA Henry
Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. "They
give us real insight into why some buildings perform poorly during
earthquakes."
Eccentric mass shakers were installed
on the roof to forcibly shake the building.
|
Large devices called eccentric mass shakers are
planted on the building's roof, sending powerful vibrations equal
to 200,000 pounds of force throughout the building while Wallace
and his crew observe the effects from a mobile field lab stationed
nearby. Hundreds of instruments installed throughout the five-story
building test the performance of the beams, columns and floor
slab, as well as non-structural components, like the sprinkler
and piping systems.
Each shake test creates an artificial earthquake
with roughly 25 percent of the force inflicted by the real Northridge
quake, which measured 6.7 in magnitude.
Professor John Wallace (fifth from the
left) and his team of researchers from nees@UCLA.
|
The UCLA field-testing and monitoring equipment
can also be used to see what happens to other structures such
as dams and bridges during simulated earthquakes.
In July, the researchers' shake tests were featured
in newscasts by KNBC-Channel 4, KMEX-Channel 34 and KVEA-Channel
52.
For more information about nees@UCLA, go to http://nees.ucla.edu/.
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