Recent catastrophic earthquakes in Northridge, Kobe, Turkey, Taiwan and India have reminded us of the powerful and potentially deadly consequences of earthquakes. An essential equipment for the study of structural performance in earthquake engineering is an earthquake simulator, or shake table, that can reproduce the ground motion of historical earthquakes. The intermediate shake table will allow undergraduate and graduate students to do research, and to learn fundamental principles of Structural Dynamic through Cal Poly's "Learn by Doing" philosophy. The goal is to expand the capabilities of the structural lab so that it can be used for research, education, and outreach activities. The proposed equipment is the Quanser STIII intermediate shake table that is capable of two-directional impulse, harmonic and random earthquake ground motion excitation. We have conducted some undergraduate research training projects as senior design projects using the existing mini instructional shake table. Students built small-scale buildings, towers, and houses constructed of steel, aluminum, timber or composite material, and tested them and observed the structural performance. Through a series of hands-on seismic simulation experiments of such prototype structures, students develop a better understanding of the seismic design concepts such as the nature of earthquake loading, resonance phenomena, the effectiveness of lateral bracing, structural damping and base isolation on structural control. In addition, students did failure identification of the structures and related this to the building design code. Due to the limited features of the shake table, however, all the studies were qualitative, thus students were not able to compare experimental responses to analytical predictions yielded through computer modeling. The new equipment will contribute to the improvement of the quality of undergraduate research training and to open opportunities for graduate students to do research. The dual-axial shake table with integrated extensive data acquisition capability and real-time control functions will be used for research, education, and outreach activities.
The broader impacts of this project will include: 1) support graduate research for students in the Master of Science in Structural Engineering (MSSE) program; 2) engage undergraduate students in research through their senior design projects; 3) integrate experimental structural dynamics into the undergraduate and graduate curriculum through effective "hands-on" learning exercises, with visual feedback of results; 4) provide students with marketable skills in communication, teamwork, and computer applications, and; 5) teach students how to use modern structural engineering testing and data acquisition equipment. By providing opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to gain research experience in structural dynamics testing, the department expects to encourage the top undergraduate students to pursue graduate study and the current graduate students to consider further study at the Ph.D. level.
