The NHERI UC San Diego Experimental Facility is home to the large, high-performance shake table called “LHPOST.” Earthquake engineers use this huge outdoor facility at the UCSD Englekirk Structural Engineering Center to test the seismic behavior of full-scale structures. In the summer of 2021, LHPOST is in the final stages of a $16.3M upgrade that will enable its platen base to move with six degrees of freedom, simulating the full, three-dimensional range of earthquake ground motions: up and down, left and right, as well as pitch, roll, and yaw. In June 2021, DesignSafe Radio features Koorosh Lotfizadeh, PhD, operations manager at the UC San Diego facility. In three episodes, Lotfizadeh discusses the evolution and the research capabilities of LHPOST6.
In this episode, Lotfizadeh discusses the upcoming Tallwood project, the first to run on LHPOST6. This multi-faceted NSF-funded project is investigating the seismic behavior of tall wooden structures. On the shake table base, the research team will construct a full-scale,10-story, cross-laminated-timber building with a rocking wall. Lotfizadeh explains the purpose of non-structural payload projects, which are still available to arrange through principal investigator Shiling Pei, professor of engineering at the Colorado School of Mines.
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