A High Capacity Dynamic Actuator for Large-Scale Experimental Testing Towards Seismic Resilience of Infrastructure Facilities

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This proposal relates to the acquisition of a high capacity state-of-the-art dynamic actuator to support large-scale experimental testing activities of structural and non-structural components, as well as high performance devices implemented in critical infrastructure facilities. Large scale testing is essential in order to fully understand the dynamic behaviour of such members and their interaction with infrastructure facilities during earthquake loading. This is attributed to several issues related to scale effects in size, rate-of-loading and subsequent effects on cyclic deterioration in strength and stiffness of such members. The requested equipment will foster collaborations between national structures laboratories and will contribute to the successful completion of important experimental programs towards the development of coherent provisions for seismic and blast-resistant design in North America. In particular, the requested equipment will be utilized to (1) investigate the dynamic stability of steel buildings designed with wide flange columns in seismic regions; to (2) investigate the implementation of new high strength steel alloys in seismic design against structural collapse; to (3) facilitate the improved design of extended shear tab connections with combined shear and axial load actions for high rise buildings; (4) to develop state-of-the-art platforms that allow geographically distributed experiments by enabling simultaneous testing of multiple large-scale subassemblies of the same structure located in remote laboratories by using existing networking technology; (5) to improve the state-of-knowledge on the seismic performance of functional and operational components for critical infrastructure.