Engineers Initiate High-Intensity Artificial EarthQuakes At A Hospital
Engineers from University of California have initiated high-intensity Engineers launch artificial earthquakes at 'hospital' - BBC News on a five-storey building filled with medical equipments. The dummy hospital has been constructed on a massive "shake table", that can expose the buildings to vibrations quite identical to the ones felt in a real earthquake. The main purpose of this test is to determine whether buildings or structures found on rubber bearings (or base isolators) are able to operate after the quake.
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The $5m project also analyzed if the bearings could safeguard other essential important buildings, like the computer data centres, so  that they could work well sans any discontinuation after a massive earthquake. This is the first time that the rubber bearings have been tried out on a full-size building built on the shake table in the US.
Tara Hutchinson, an engineering professor at the University of California, San Diego, explained the concept of these bearing systems. She said that all the bearings do is to uncouple the building from the movement of the ground, as if the building is on roller skates, thus minimizing the effect of the quake. She was concerned that while most of the research focussed on the structural soundness of the building, very little amount of research was devoted to analyze the important parts of the building, like the stairs, lifts, etc., and their functionality after a major quake attack. Well, at least a less shaky future, eh?
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The $5m project also analyzed if the bearings could safeguard other essential important buildings, like the computer data centres, so  that they could work well sans any discontinuation after a massive earthquake. This is the first time that the rubber bearings have been tried out on a full-size building built on the shake table in the US.
Tara Hutchinson, an engineering professor at the University of California, San Diego, explained the concept of these bearing systems. She said that all the bearings do is to uncouple the building from the movement of the ground, as if the building is on roller skates, thus minimizing the effect of the quake. She was concerned that while most of the research focussed on the structural soundness of the building, very little amount of research was devoted to analyze the important parts of the building, like the stairs, lifts, etc., and their functionality after a major quake attack. Well, at least a less shaky future, eh?
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