9500301 Spencer This project is to purchase a data acquisition and analysis system which will be dedicated to inter-disciplinary research in engineering. The equipment will be used to support ongoing NSF sponsored research efforts on active, semi-active and hybrid control of structures for earthquake hazard mitigation. The data acquisition system will allow for accurate determination of mathematical models (both linear and/or nonlinear) from which appropriate control strategies can be developed. Such models are essential, since many of the most promising control devices are intrinsically nonlinear and hysteretic. This equipment is expected to accelerate development of control devices/strategies that are implementable in full-scale structures and to allow prescribed modelling uncertainties and errors to be introduced to asses the robustness and performance of the controlled structure. ***
