News Release

Shake Table 101

NHERI/UC San Diego Large Performance Outdoors Shake Table

Largest outdoor shake table in the world/one of the two largest in the world
Underwent a major upgrade that took it from 1D to 3D (or one degree of freedom–back and forth–to six degrees of freedom–adding up and down, left to right, pitch, roll and yaw).
Main funder: National Science Foundation
Dimensions: 7.6 by 12.2 meters (25 by 40 feet)
Can accelerate up to 4 g (by comparison, astronauts experience 3gs during a rocket launch)
Can support structures of up to 400 tons

People:
Principal investigator: Professor John McCartney

Co-PI in charge of outreach: Professor Lelli Van Den Einde
Site manager: Koorosh Lotfizadeh

Some past projects:

Impact:

Important changes in design codes for commercial and residential structures
- Example: , in San Francisco, approximately 6,000 soft-story wood-frame buildings are being retrofitted to make them safer in strong earthquakes. Full-scale testing of retrofit systems for these “soft-story” wood frame buildings on the UC San Diego shake table, led by Professor John van de Lindt from Colorado State University, was critical to make this possible.
New insights into the seismic performance of geotechnical systems, such as foundations, tunnels and retaining walls.
Validate the use of innovative technologies to make buildings more likely to withstand earthquakes.
- Example: Research by Professor Jose Restrepo at UC San Diego, co-principal investigator for the NSF upgrade grant, and Professor Robert Fleischman at the University of Arizona, led to new design standards for so-called floor diaphragms, which transfer seismic forces from building floors to columns, walls and eventually foundations.

Visual resources:

Available media

Video
UC San Diego produced videos
NHERI Shaketable Videos on YouTube
Shake table video tour
Live video feeds from shake table

Ioana Patringenaru
Jacobs School of Engineering
858-822-0899
ipatrin@ucsd.edu