UCB NEES Equipment Site Upgrade

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This award provides funding to the University of California, Berkeley (UCB), to upgrade the experimental capabilities of the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) reconfigurable reaction wall earthquake simulator facility at UCB that will be operated by NEES Consortium, Inc., as a national shared use facility during FY 2005 - FY 2014. The major equipment at the UCB NEES site, which consists of a strong reaction floor, a reconfigurable reaction wall, hydraulic supply, seven long-stroke high-speed actuators, a 128-channel data acquisition system (DAQ), a portfolio of instrumentation, and a four-million pound compression-tension machine, enables testing of a wide variety of structural components. The requested equipment provides additional equipment for the UCB NEES site, was selected based on input from earthquake engineering researchers interested in using this equipment site, and includes: a 64-channel upgrade to the DAQ system, a high-fidelity surface damage visualization (Hi-Fi Viz) system, and a reconfigurable test platform for earthquake testing (REPEAT). The additional data channels make it possible to instrument and test a wider variety of structures. The Hi-Fi Viz system provides researchers the capability to acquire, quantify, and view damage occurring on the surface of a portion of or the entire specimen. This system will include a 2D-3D projector system, laser scanner system, and high-speed camera system. The REPEAT steel structure frame provides a reusable platform for various test configurations, thus reducing the need to build special-purpose test set-ups for each experiment. This equipment will be available to the earthquake engineering research community through the NEES Consortium, Inc., UCB NEES facility. This award is funded by the NSF NEES Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) project and is a component of the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP).