This earthquake-resistant house was tested on the Jacobs School shake table

 
Stanford researchers tested an earthquake-resistant house on the shake table at the Englekirk Structural Engineering Center here at the Jacobs School this fall. The house was equipped with extra-strength walls and sliding isolators that allowed it to skate along the shaking ground instead of collapsing. The modifications are fairly inexpensive, researchers said.

"We want a house that is damage free after the big earthquake," said Eduardo Miranda, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. He co-led the project with Deierlein and Benjamin Fell, an associate professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at California State University, Sacramento.

The researchers put the house through motions from the Loma Prieta earthquake, which had measured at a 6.9 magnitude on the Richter scale. More about the tests in this story from Stanford University News.

Jacobs School Shake Table Featured on NOVA Nov. 6

The shake table at the Englekirk Structural Engineering Center was in the spotlight Nov. 6 on "Making Stuff Safer," a PBS/NOVA show hosted by David Pogue.
One of the show's segments documents how researchers used the facility, which is the largest outdoor shake table in the world, to test so-called wood frame soft-story buildings. The structures, dating back to the 1920s and 1930s, typically have first-floor garages and apartments on the upper floors. There are tens of thousands of these types of buildings throughout California, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the United States.
Engineers used the table to test various seismic retrofits in a 44,000-square-foot building built specifically for the occasion. John Van de Lindt, the principal investigator on the project, secured a $1.24 million grant from the National Science Foundation for the research. His team from Colorado State University is working with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Cal-Poly Pomona, Western Michigan University and Clemson University. Numerous industry partners, including Simpson Strong-Tie and the Forest Products Laboratory, as well as several other government entities are also collaborating on the tests.
More on "Making Stuff Safer" here.
More on the research here.

Bringing the House Down

It took four tries, but engineers at the Englekirk Structural Engineering Center at UC San Diego finally brought down at four-story structure they had been testing since July on the world's largest outdoor shake table. Led by John van de Lindt, a professor of Colorado State University, they were trying to understand how to make structures with wood frames and first-floor garages better equipped to withstand earthquakes.

Results so far were positive, van de Lindt told UT San Diego:

"We learned that these buildings can deform quite a bit before they collapse; that's a positive. And the ground has to move a lot."

Saturday, Aug. 17, van de Lindt and colleagues had removed the various retrofits that they had been testing for about a month. Their goal was to see how far they would have to push the building before it collapsed. It turned out to be quite a bit.

Researchers used the Englekirk Center's shake table to simulate the 1992 Cape Mendocino earthquake, a 7.2 magnitude temblor, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, a 6.9 shaker also known as the World Series earthquake, and finally the Superstition Hills earthquake, a 6.7 temblor that caused $3 million in damage in Imperial County in 1987. That's when the house fell down.

"The first floor just pancaked," van de Lindt told UT San Diego.

In addition to UT San Diego, the test was also covered by:

Gizmodo

10News, San Diego

CBS News 8, San Diego 

and other local TV stations. 

Learn more about the research project here. 

More info about the Englekirk Center here.

More pictures from Saturday's tests: