This award provides funding to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) to upgrade the experimental capabilities of the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) geotechnical centrifuge facility at RPI that will be operated by NEES Consortium, Inc., as a national shared use facility during FY 2005 - FY 2014. The major equipment at the RPI NEES site includes the 150 g-ton geotechnical centrifuge, 2D shaker, 2D laminar box, 4D in-flight robot, web-based data acquisition system, advanced instrumentation, and telepresence and teleparticipation capabilities. Under this award, RPI will upgrade and integrate the in-flight robot and 2D shaker, so that they can both be used in the same earthquake simulation centrifuge experiment. This capability was not provided under the original cooperative agreement CMS-0086555 to establish the NEES RPI equipment site. The proposed integration of the in-flight robot and 2D shaker constitutes a substantial capability improvement of the RPI NEES facility and the services that RPI will be able to provide to the earthquake engineering research community and practicing engineers. It will permit the use of the in-flight robot to perform complex operations on larger soil models while they are on the centrifuge under high centrifugal acceleration up to 100g, before shaking or between shaking events using the 2D shaker, without the need to stop the centrifuge to place and/or remove either the shaker or robot. In order to accommodate the 2D shaker and the in-flight robot together on the centrifuge due to the limited vertical space, RPI will also develop special robotic tools that are telescopic or retractable. The proposed integration will allow sophisticated in-flight operations such as: (1) applying static and dynamic loads in various directions, (2) pile driving, (3) excavation of soil to simulate construction activities, (4) in situ testing of soil properties using calibrated probes, (5) soil remediation, and (6) in-flight fluid injection and sampling for passive site remediation. This equipment will be available to the earthquake engineering research community through the NEES Consortium, Inc., RPI NEES facility. This award is funded by the NSF NEES Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) project and is a component of the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP).
