Illustration of shake table experiments in structural engineering curriculum

Abstract

The importance of understanding the effects of earthquakes on structures to the civil engineering community is apparent. Recent catastrophic earthquakes in Northridge, Kobe, Turkey, Taiwan and India have reminded us of the powerful and potentially deadly consequences of such natural events. The essential equipment for the study of structural dynamic behavior in earthquake engineering is an earthquake simulator, or shake table, that can reproduce the historical earthquake ground motion records. For the feasibility of classroom demonstration, small scale table-top shake tables, such as MTS T-TEQ, are used for illustration purposes in the structural analysis and design lecture courses. From observing the structural dynamic behavior of civil engineering prototype structures, students will have a better understanding of the seismic design concepts such as the nature of earthquake loading, the effectiveness of lateral bracing, structural damping and base isolation on structural control.