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Description

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.

Koorosh Lotfizadeh introduces LHPOST, the nation’s largest shake table. He describes its components, its sophisticated machinery, and the advantages of an outdoor shake table—including the ability to use drones and GPS monitoring and to conduct fire tests. Lotfizadeh explains LHPOSTS testing capabilities, which include LiDAR, soil boxes, and hybrid simulation, and he describes the broad range of full-scale specimens that can be constructed and tested on the shake table.

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