Shaking a 275-ton Building

Roland Piquepaille writes "If you want to predict how a tall building can resist to an earthquake, some researchers have better tools than others. Engineers from the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) have built a full-size 275-ton building and really shaken it to obtain earthshaking images. The building was equipped with some 600 sensors and filmed as the shake table simulated the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles, California. It gave so much data to the engineers to analyze that they needed a supercomputer to help them. Now they hope their study will yield to better structure performance for future buildings in case of earthquakes."

Comments

Somebody saw this coming

[MichaelSmith]

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Re:Somebody saw this coming

[zentagonist]

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-04/uoc --ei041107.php should be the article ... no images though.

Re:Somebody saw this coming

[Anonymous Coward]

Directly from SDSC:
http://www.sdsc.edu/News%20Items/PR041107_shaketab le.html

Re:Somebody saw this coming

[corvair2k1]

The link that should have been provided: http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/supercomputer/04- 07Earthquake.asp

Here's the Correct Link

[AaxelB]

Link!

Two little dashes in the url became one superdash!

HD videos of the shake

[Bo'Bob'O]

A coworker of mine is in the department, and showed me this page: http://visservices.sdsc.edu/projects/nees/article. php

It has a video of the shake as well as high def video of the simulations themselves. It's pretty damn cool, you can watch the whole building flex and sway about on top of the the shake table, and the waves propagate through the building. (Each colored dot is a GPS sensor, 10 per floor, over 7 floors).

Re:Any structural engineers around?

[Tomfrh]

Are we at the point in history where we can design a building completely inside a computer and simulate the effect earthquakes of various degrees will have on the building?

Pretty much.

Who makes that software?

People like this: http://www.csiberkeley.com/ http://www.risatech.com/.

How much does it cost?

About $5000.

List of Movies and Other Multimedia

[stikves]

There is a list of all the media (including several movies) on their press release site:
http://visservices.sdsc.edu/projects/nees/article. php

This includes both real and simulated building captures (and several overlayed ones).

Re:Too bad

[iminplaya]

...because there was no fire.

Correction

FTL: The plane's high-octane fuel exploded, hurtling flames down the side of the building and inside through hallways and stairwells all the way down to the 75th floor.

Re:The only problem is

[Moraelin]

Very much so. Each problem has a different set of details that matter and details which can be safely ignored. And a different need for accuracy.