News Release

Earthquake testing lab for nation's lifelines

Grant and Award Announcement

Cornell University

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Cornell University is to become a site in an innovative national earthquake research system linking 15 of the nation's leading engineering schools. A $2.1 million award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) is enabling Cornell to develop a state-of-the-art facility, scheduled to open in October 2004, to test the effects of earthquake-caused damage to the nation's lifelines. These are structures, from bridges to pipelines to communications conduits, that form parts of complex networks of vital resources and services.

The Cornell laboratory, a collaboration with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), will become a link in an NSF-funded chain of testing and research sites called the George E. Brown Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES). The facility is under construction in the Winter Lab in Thurston Hall at Cornell's School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Harry Stewart, an associate professor in the school and principal investigator on the NSF award, says the Cornell-RPI lab "will be a national resource as one of the 15 experimental equipment sites in the consortium." It represents, he notes, "a very different way of thinking about how universities work together to share information effectively." The NEES consortium initially is expected to operate from 2004 to 2014.

The Cornell facility will become the national center for calculating the effects of violent earth movements on structures during an earthquake. In particular, soil deformation can rupture underground gas pipelines, water lines and communications conduits. Above ground, seismic movements can severely damage bridge abutments and road surfaces. Three years ago, Thomas O'Rourke, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell, built a 30-foot-long box filled with 60 tons of sand in which he ruptured steel gas pipelines by subjecting them to the force of the moving soil.

O'Rourke, a co-investigator on the Cornell NEES lab, says that experiment, performed for Tokyo Gas Co., was an important factor in winning the NSF award. The new facility, he says, will make it possible to apply displacements that might be expected during earthquakes. The NEES Consortium was organized in 2000 with contracts to 10 U.S. engineering schools, each assigned a separate aspect of earthquake-engineering research, from large shaking tables to a tsunami wave basin. Cornell's award was one of five under Phase II of NEES. By next year, the 15 labs will be linked by Internet2, the high-speed scientific and educational network, and will have protocols in place for data transfer, data sharing and data mining.

The NSF funding will enable Stewart and his team to design and build an unusual testing facility. Instead of permanent soil boxes, or testing basins, such as O'Rourke used in his experiment for Tokyo Gas, the testing structures will be customized for each research group. In addition, modular, reinforced concrete structures are being designed by Cornell postdoctoral researcher Keith Kesner to form a reaction wall more than 50 feet long and up to 24 feet high. The blocks will be assembled in various configurations to apply different displacements and loads. Other equipment will include four new actuators, machines that push masses, such as tons of soil, with great force. The largest of the actuators will be capable of moving heavy masses up to six feet by applying as much as 100,000 pounds of force. Upgraded hydraulic power supply and electronics also will be installed.

In addition, the laboratory will have its own video-conferencing center and an instructional laboratory. Starting next year, education and outreach also will become a major focus of the new facility.

Although the NSF is funding all equipment purchases and annual maintenance costs, Cornell is making substantial contributions to the facility, Stewart says. This includes funds for building, education and staff, and funds to keep communications and Internet2 connections operating.

Scott Jones, the Cornell senior research associate who is managing the NEES facility, stresses that the Cornell laboratory will be open to all researchers, with scheduling carried out at a central consortium office. All data gathered in the Cornell facility will immediately be made available over the high-speed data lines to all members of the consortium. "We are defining the way people work together to solve problems," he says.

Stewart and O'Rourke will work closely with RPI on structural testing. RPI received a $2.4 million NSF grant in 2000 to establish a NEES site for geotechnical centrifuge testing. RPI engineers are developing special centrifuge boxes to test small samples at increased gravitational fields. The data from these experiments will help the Cornell-based laboratory carry out large-scale tests.

Cornell researchers also will be working closely with the NEES facility at SUNY-Buffalo, which houses dual shaking tables and high-performance actuators.

"The key aspect is that we have to be committed to working as part of a consortium," Stewart notes. "The project will place Cornell within a national and international network that will play a major role in the future of earthquake engineering research."

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Related World Wide Web sites: The following sites provide additional information on this news release. Some might not be part of the Cornell University community, and Cornell has no control over their content or availability.

NEES Consortium: http://www.nees.org

NEES Cornell: http://www.nees.cornell.edu


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