A NEES Geotechnical Centrifuge Facility

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CMS-00865566KutterThe Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) Program is a project funded under the NSF Major Research Equipment Program. This cooperative agreement, under the NEES Program, establishes a NEES centrifuge earthquake engineering research equipment site at the University of California (UC), Davis. UC Davis will design, purchase, construct, install, commission, and operate new equipment for, and upgrades to, its existing Geotechnical Centrifuge. The upgraded Centrifuge will be operational by 2004 or earlier and will be managed as a national shared-use NEES equipment site, with teleobservation and teleoperation capabilities, to provide new earthquake engineering research testing capabilities through 2014. This NEES equipment site will be connected to the NEES collaboratory through a high performance network. Shared-use access and training will be coordinated through the NEES Consortium. This award is the outcome of peer review of this proposal submitted to program solicitation NSF 00-6, NEES: Earthquake Engineering Research Equipment. This Centrifuge is located in the Center for Geotechnical Modeling, two miles west of the University of California, Davis campus, and has been used by UC Davis faculty and students and other researchers since 1996. UC Davis will provide infrastructure improvements for housing and operating the Centrifuge and for storing new equipment. This award provides the following equipment: (a) modifications to the Centrifuge to enable operation up to 80 g, (b) upgrades to the existing horizontal shaker, (c) one large hinged-plate container, (d) one biaxial horizontal-vertical shaker, (e) one four degree-of-freedom robot, robot tools, and associated software, capable of installing and/or operating test devices such as piles, penetrometers, deep soil vibrators, and video inspection devices without stopping the Centrifuge, (f) networked data acquisition systems with Internet teleobservation/teleoperation capability provided through the campus' Gigabit Ethernet Backbone, (g) data visualization capabilities with a high resolution projection system, (h) ten strands of 20 dual-axis digital MEMS accelerometers developed under a subaward to Integrated Mico Instruments, and (i) tomographic imaging and geophysical testing tools/methodologies, developed under a subward to the Georgia Institute of Technology. The capabilities provided by the upgraded Centrifuge will enable researchers to investigate important problems in earthquake engineering such as: soil-pile-structure interaction in soft or liquefiable soils; the effects of vertical shaking on bridge structures, industrial and lifeline facilities, slopes, and embankment dams; and ground improvement methods to mitigate liquefaction hazards. UC Davis will integrate experimentation with the upgraded Centrifuge into its research program and undergraduate and graduate curricula and provide training opportunities for outside researchers.