Wood high-rise tops off at UC San Diego shake table — tests planned for early next year

The tallest building ever to be tested on an earthquake simulator topped off at 10 stories high at UC San Diego's shake table when construction crews and a giant crane flew the last wood panel to the top of the structure on Dec. 6, 2022.

The building is made from cross-laminated timber, or CLT, a material that allows for faster construction and is also sustainable. The goal of the Tallwood project, funded by the National Science Foundation, is to determine how well CLT mid- to high-rise buildings would fare during an earthquake. It is led by the Colorado School of Mines with a team of researchers from universities around the world. You can learn more about the project at the Tallwood website, in this story by the San Diego Union-Tribune and in this podcast episode. 

The building is set to be tested some time early next year, and will undergo several simulated earthquakes, including the equivalent of the 6.7 Northridge earthquake that shook Southern California in 1994.

The Tallwood project is the first large-scale building to be tested on UC San Diego's shake table, one of the two largest in the world, since the table underwent a major $16.9 million upgrade funded by the NSF.  It went from being able to move in one direction – east-west – to three directions – east-west, north-south, up and down, as well as roll, pitch and yaw, three motions in the x, y and z axes performed by airplanes in flight and commonly seen in earthquake motions. The upgrade to one vertical and two horizontal motions and three rotations–known technically as six degrees of freedom–will allow the facility to test structures with an unprecedented degree of accuracy when compared to real earthquake ground motions.

The shake table, opened in 2004, has tested more than 30 structures in that time, and has already made a significant impact. Tests here have resulted in changes to building codes for everything from hospitals, to tall buildings, to roads and bridges.

Find out more about the shake table's impact in this KPBSstory.

Faculty assistant in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering is recognized with Exemplary Employee of the Year Award

 

Lusia Veksler, a faculty assistant in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, has received an Exemplary Employee of the Year award. Veksler is being recognized for her service to the department’s faculty, graduate students and operations. 

Veksler founded and leads a Communication in English program for graduate students in mechanical and aerospace engineering, who are using English as a second language. Her aim has been to encourage greater engagement by students new to the community, who find communicating with other students to be a challenge. Faculty said they found her efforts to be beneficial as these graduate students become more outgoing, assertive, and positive. 

Veksler also provided graduate student assistance and advice for a faculty member’s large research group of about a dozen graduate students when that faculty member ended up unexpectedly in the emergency room. This helped to avoid significant struggles for the entire group.

She supported a PhD student in an mental health crisis emergency by personally speaking with her on the phone no fewer than 10 times and no fewer than five times in person in a two-week period. She also escorted the student to Counseling and Psychological Services (UCSD CAPS) to seek counseling and avoid self-harm. The student has since recovered and returned to graduate studies.

On the operations side, Veksler led an initiative to obtain software for pre-submission plagiarism detection in research-related publications to avoid adverse impact on UC San Diego and our faculty. Over a six-month period, she negotiated on behalf of a group of faculty that grew to include research groups across the Jacobs School of Engineering to obtain a per-user license for iThenticate for $10/year, significantly reduced from an incredibly expensive $100/use fee that some faculty were paying. The software streamlines assessment of plagiarism to a few second effort via an online interface.

Veksler also recorded several brief video training programs for faculty and students to cope with the changeover to SAP Concur travel and expense service, tailoring them to the attention and time-crunched people in these groups. 

She has no doubt saved the university substantial costs and helped the faculty and students under her care adhere to university practices, procedures and policies, researchers said.

Veksler also participates in the department’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusiveness (EDI) Committee as a staff member of her own accord. She is a vocal member of this committee and an invaluable advocate for traditionally underrepresented groups in the department, faculty said.

Reinventing the Wheel: Former Triton Racing members invent novel public health device

What do race cars, aerospace engineering and HIV/AIDS have in common? They all played a part in the making of FluxErgy, a medical diagnostics company started by two UC San Diego aerospace engineering alumni.

Co-founders Tej Patel (BS MS, ‘12) and Ryan Revilla (BS, ’10) have similar stories – they both came to UC San Diego for aerospace engineering, and they both saw the  Triton Racing (UC San Diego’s Formula SAE team) car parked on Library Walk one day and thought, I want to work on that!

A short time later, the two found themselves working on the next iteration of Triton Racing’s competition car together, and they became fast friends.

“Triton Racing was easily the most important thing I did during my time at UC San Diego to get hands-on experience,” said Patel. “At the time, the team was only 7-8 people, so we each had the opportunity to work on every part of the car. Ryan worked on the engine, but he also helped build the chassis.”

After graduating, both were hired by a former member of the MIT Formula SAE team to build sensors for real racecars.

After living the dream working on high-end racecars for a few years, Patel began to itch to build something that could help people.

At the time, his wife (Priya Bhat Patel, BS ‘10, Physiology and Neuroscience) was working on her masters in public health, so he set out to find a way to build a point-of-care testing device.

“I approached Ryan with the idea, and between his garage and my kitchen, we built our first prototype,” said Patel.

At first, Patel and Revilla thought they’d build a low-cost PCR machine, but they knew they wanted one platform that could perform a wide array of tests, such as viral load and blood cell count. Instead, they built a general-purpose device that uses a test card with an embedded program that tells the machine what kind of unique test to run. The device works by taking various optical and electrical measurements from the function specific test card.

By adapting the design of the test card rather than the device for each type of test, the co-founders eliminated the need for multiple machines to conduct the typical assortment of laboratory analyses. With a simple workflow and small footprint, the low cost device and test card are meant for point-of-care use locally and in low-resource settings.

“Because we came into this as engineers, we took a very different approach to the assays than a biologist would,” said Patel. “We found that there were quite a few unnecessary steps in traditional assays. We found ourselves asking, ‘do we really need to do it this way?’”

Patel and Revilla attribute this approach to their time spent at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. During that time, the Triton Racing team learned a big lesson about taking a systems level approach to building a racecar.

“The first year Ryan and I were a part of the team, we built a really complex car,” said Patel. “But because of that, we didn’t make it to the competition. We learned that you can have the fanciest, lightest wheel ever, but if the car can’t go around a turn it’s useless.”

That lesson in systems engineering has shaped the company the two built together. They have since hired six more UC San Diego graduates.

When asked what advice they have for startups, Patel and Revilla agreed that it’s best to fail early and often.

“Oftentimes, startups don’t think about scalability,” said Patel. “Our device went through nine iterations in one year in order to optimize its manufacturability.”

If you’d like to join FluxErgy’s First Access Program as a technology development partner or Beta user, please contact info@FluxErgy.com. Find out more information at www.FluxErgy.com