This award provides funding to the University of Colorado - Boulder (CU), to upgrade the experimental capabilities of the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) Fast Hybrid Test Platform for the Seismic Performance Evaluation of Structural Systems site that will be operated by NEES Consortium, Inc., as a national shared use facility during FY 2005 - FY 2014. The major equipment at the CU NEES site includes: (I) hydraulic equipment; (II) instrumentation package; (III) control, computation, data acquisition, and networking systems. Under this award, the following equipment will be purchased for this site: Data-Acquisition unit; LVD package; and a Reaction Wall system. To fully utilize Fast Hybrid Testing (FHT) techniques, a bi-directional reaction-wall system is proposed. The reaction-wall system will consist of a main reaction wall that is 4.1-m (13.5-ft.) long and 3.66-m (12-ft.) tall and two smaller walls in the orthogonal direction that are 2.29-m (7.5-ft.) long and 3.66-m (12-ft.) tall. The current DAQ allows only 48 channels to interface with the specimen. A supplemental data-acquisition unit will provide additional 56 data channels, and 16 LVDTs (Linear Variable Differential Transformers). This upgraded equipment including the reaction wall will utilize the FHT capabilities to its true potential at this NEES site.
This equipment will be available to the earthquake engineering research community through the NEES Consortium, Inc., CU 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).
