On today’s show, we get an intro to the mobile shaker fleet at the NHERI’s University of Texas facility. Host Dan Zehner meets up with geotechnical engineer Brady Cox, professor of engineering at Utah State University and co-PI at the NHERI @ University of Texas mobile shaker facility. Cox introduces the UTexas mobile shakers, huge vehicles that simulate a range of ground motions for studying earthquakes. There’s “T-Rex,” perhaps the world’s only shaker capable of generating large dynamic forces in any of three directions — vertical, horizontal in-line, and horizontal cross-line. And the custom-built “Liquidator,” weighing in at 70,000 pounds, which shakes vertically at very low frequencies; its longer waves help researchers look deeper into the ground.
NHERI at UTexas website: https://utexas.designsafe-ci.org/
Short video shows how a shaker truck is used to characterize soil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cGbMggwxog
More about Brady Cox’s research: https://engineering.usu.edu/cee/people/faculty/cox-brady
