Shaking a 275-ton Building 110
Roland Piquepaille writes "If you want to predict how a tall building can resist to an earthquake, some researchers have better tools than others. Engineers from the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) have built a full-size 275-ton building and really shaken it to obtain earthshaking images. The building was equipped with some 600 sensors and filmed as the shake table simulated the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles, California. It gave so much data to the engineers to analyze that they needed a supercomputer to help them. Now they hope their study will yield to better structure performance for future buildings in case of earthquakes."
Somebody saw this coming (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Somebody saw this coming (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the Correct Link (Score:4, Informative)
Two little dashes in the url became one superdash!
HD videos of the shake (Score:5, Informative)
It has a video of the shake as well as high def video of the simulations themselves. It's pretty damn cool, you can watch the whole building flex and sway about on top of the the shake table, and the waves propagate through the building. (Each colored dot is a GPS sensor, 10 per floor, over 7 floors).
Re:Any structural engineers around? (Score:4, Informative)
Pretty much.
Who makes that software?
People like this: http://www.csiberkeley.com/ [csiberkeley.com] http://www.risatech.com/ [risatech.com].
How much does it cost?
About $5000.
Re:Somebody saw this coming (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.sdsc.edu/News%20Items/PR041107_shaketa
List of Movies and Other Multimedia (Score:3, Informative)
http://visservices.sdsc.edu/projects/nees/article
This includes both real and simulated building captures (and several overlayed ones).
Re:Somebody saw this coming (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Too bad (Score:2, Informative)
Correction [about.com]
FTL: The plane's high-octane fuel exploded, hurtling flames down the side of the building and inside through hallways and stairwells all the way down to the 75th floor.
Re:The only problem is (Score:3, Informative)