Artificial Earthquakes To Help Build Safer Buildings

Engineers have rolled up their sleeves to create artificial earthquakes - with an aim to develop techniques to build sturdier and safer buildings & structures. A team of structural and civil engineers from Johns Hopkins University are going to shake themselves up using massive moving platforms to simulate the earthquake. They'll test how a two-story building made of cold-formed steel can stand up to a lab-generated earthquake that resembles the Southern California quake. The testing will be done at the facility in New York which would mark the culmination of a 3 year long project with over $1 million in investments.


The test facility is a 50ft x 20ft x 20ft tall. The trials will be done in mid-August and the engineers will try to create earthquake similar to the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles that claimed several lives and damage worth billions of dollars.

They will use the observations and data collected to improve the building codes that will make the upcoming cold-formed steel buildings less expensive to construct and also more reliable. The team says that it's the first time a building of a cold-formed steel framing will be shaken in this way. This would lead to tracking even the minor changes that may have huge impact in the building design.

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