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Shaking a 275-ton Building

Posted by Zonk on from the without-using-your-superpowers dept.

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."

5 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Somebody saw this coming by MichaelSmith · · Score: 3, Informative

    The page you are looking for has moved. Please go to the main EurekAlert! homepage to locate the section you are interested in and reset your bookmarks.

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    1. Re:Somebody saw this coming by zentagonist · · Score: 5, Informative

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

  2. Here's the Correct Link by AaxelB · · Score: 4, Informative

    Link!

    Two little dashes in the url became one superdash!

  3. HD videos of the shake by Bo'Bob'O · · Score: 4, Informative

    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).

  4. Re:Any structural engineers around? by Tomfrh · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.