Five Story Building Performance Test During Earthquake And Post-Earthquake Fires

When an earthquake strikes it’s the high-value buildings such as hospitals, schools and other important buildings which have to be operational and serve the people in need. It is for this reason that the past few years saw a lot of investments going into researching of earthquake resistant structures. The Structural engineers at the University of California, San Diego are now started working on a $5 million project which will put a 5 story building to shaking table test. Starting April 16th, the two weeks of testing will cover a variety of tests to not only test the structural components of the building, but also the non-structural components and the building will be put to a test to see how the building will react to the post-earthquake fires.

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The 80 feet tall building is a five-story building which has an Intensive care unit, a surgery suite, a working elevator and a large water tower, air conditioning and heating units on its roof. It is completed with the modern ceiling systems, a heating and air conditioning system, functional sprinklers, computer servers, large and small laboratory equipment, and electrical equipment and wiring. The external walls are constructed using prefabricated concrete cladding and also commercial materials like synthetic stucco. The building also has base isolation system that consists of the cylindrical bearings which isolates the buildings from base and tries to keep the effect of earthquake on the building as minimum as possible. This will be the first time that an isolated building of this scale is being tested in United States. During the second week of testing these bearings would be removed and the building would come in direct contact with the base. This is the first time a building on a shake table test has the HVAC, piping, sprinklers and other electrical systems incorporated in it. This structure is going to be tested on the world’s largest High-Performance Outdoor Shake Table in UC San Deigo.
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 “The tests will have a significant impact on how engineers model the nonstructural components of a building and how they calculate what forces they need to withstand during an earthquake,” #-Link-Snipped-# Professor Tara Hutchinson of the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego, the project’s lead principal investigator.

While the tests are in progress every detail is recorded with the help of sensors and cameras. There are 230 accelerometers which will help the engineers record how fast the various components of the building moved when the building is subjected to earthquakes. Around 160 sensors, would precisely measure the displacement between any two points in the building. 50 strain gauges are employed to measure the deformations due to strain that occur in the reinforcements in the concrete. And 80 cameras will monitor the Non-Structural Components during these tests to see how they are performing.

The earthquakes simulated in these tests would be similar to the motions recorded during the 1994 Northridge earthquake, 2002 earthquake that took place in Denali, Alaska, 2010 earthquake in Chile and the 2007 earthquake in Peru. In May, after the two weeks of seismic testing, the building would be subjected to fire testing for two days. Sensors would be used to detect the temperature at various parts of the buildings and also see how the smoke would move in the building. This will test how the fire protections system would perform in the building after earthquake.

The project has been sponsored by National Science Foundation, the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation, the California Seismic Safety Commission, the Charles Pankow Foundation, the Englekirk Advisory Board, the Society of Fire Protection Engineers and other Industry partners. Watch this video: