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Shake The Room: US Conducts Dummy Quake To Test New Homes
New York (AFP) Nov 14, 2006 A major earthquake struck a small area of New York state Tuesday, where scientists simulated a 6.7 magnitude tremor to test how well a wooden house would stand up to the battering. Engineers built the three-bedroom townhouse -- complete with plates on the kitchen table and car in the garage -- on a so-called shake table and rigged it with hundreds of monitors before subjecting it to the violent wobble test. The simulated quake, which lasted just a few seconds, sent furniture and televisions flying but caused what the scientists described as surprisingly little damage. Most unexpectedly, all the windows remained intact. The test is part of a four-year research project that aims to help builders construct safer houses in areas prone to earthquakes, such as California. "This test here is very monumental in terms of data gathering. We have a wealth of data at the level that we've never pushed a building inside a laboratory," said lead investigator Professor Andre Filiatrault. "Perhaps this knowledge now can trickle down to better provisions, requirements and building codes... so that we can save more lives," he added. "The results... probably will change the way we model wood-frame structures," added John van de Lindt, principal investigator and associate professor at Colorado State University. The test was designed to replicate a 6.7-magnitude quake that hit Los Angeles in 1994, causing extensive damage to wooden-built homes in particular. The disaster caused more than 40 billion dollars' worth of damage and left more than 50 people dead and thousands homeless, according to official reports. The test was carried out at the Structural Engineering and Earthquake Simulation Laboratory at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. The university described the test as the largest ever conducted on a wooden building, with 250 sensors gathering detailed information about how each part of the house behaves during the simulation. A dozen video cameras, eight inside and four outside, recorded the shaking. The research project is to test a six-story, wood-frame structure on the world's largest shake table in Miki City, Japan, early in 2009. The Japanese facility was developed after the devastating 1995 Kobe earthquake.
Source: Agence France-Presse Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Related Links Colorado State University When the Earth Quakes Bringing Order To A World Of Disasters When the Earth Quakes A world of storm and tempest
New Research Reveals Hidden Earthquake Trouble Spots
Leicester UK (SPX) Nov 13, 2006A team from the University of Leicester has used a powerful laser mounted on an aircraft to uncover earthquake fault lines that are hidden by forest cover and never before seen by earth scientists. The 2005 Kashmir earthquake was a terrifying example of how faults in mountainous regions that pose serious seismic hazards can go unnoticed because they are hidden by forest cover and thus are not easily identified. |
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