MRI: Acquisition of State-of-the-Art Soil-Structure Interaction Facility

土-结构相互作用是土木工程界面临的主要挑战之一。部分原因是SSI需要多学科的研究努力，部分原因是缺乏专门为研究目的设计的先进传感器。SSI对国家有重大影响？美国的基础设施包括桥梁、地下结构、挡土系统、隧道和海上平台。该合同将用于购买设备，在拉斐特学院建立最先进的土壤-结构相互作用设施。更好地理解SSI的关键是准确测量结构与周围土壤之间的接触压力和运动。通过该合同购买的仪器，特别是先进的压力和变形传感器，具有最小侵入的优势，可以实现精确的压力和变形测量。这些测量显著增强了我们对依赖于SSI的结构行为的理解。除了先进的传感器外，该合同还将资助两个灵活设计的土壤箱、一个数据采集系统、负载和压力传感器、土壤压实机、土壤质量控制和表征设备以及分析工具。该奖项的广泛影响包括开发新的高级本科选修课程，重点是SSI系统的设计、分析、仪器和测量。该设施具有视频会议和网络广播功能，允许其他机构的教师在他们的研究和教学中使用该设施。

Soil-structure interaction (SSI) is one of the major challenges that faces the civil engineering community; partly because SSI requires multidisciplinary research efforts and partly because of the lack of advanced sensors specifically designed for research purposes. SSI significantly affects the nation?s infrastructure including bridges, underground structures, retaining systems, tunnels, and offshore platforms. This award is to acquire equipment to establish a state-of-the-art soil-structure interaction facility at Lafayette College. The key to better understanding SSI is accurately measuring the contact pressure and movement at the interface between a structure and the surrounding soil. The instrumentation to be purchased through this award, especially the advanced pressure and deformation sensors, offer the advantages of minimum intrusion resulting in accurate pressure and deformation measurements. These measurements significantly enhance our understanding of the behavior of structures that depend on SSI. In addition to the advanced sensors, the award will fund two flexibly designed soil boxes, a data acquisition system, load and pressure sensors, soil compactors, soil quality control and characterization equipment, and analysis tools. The broader impacts of this award include developing new upper level undergraduate elective courses that focus on design, analysis, instrumentation, and measurements of SSI systems. The facility, with video conferencing and web broadcasting capabilities, allow faculty at other institutions to use the facility in their research and teaching.