UB Engineering’s Earthquake Engineering Simulation Facility

UB Engineering operates a National Science Foundation George E. Brown Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) Facility within the University at Buffalo Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering.

The NSF facility will provides new advanced technology to test how very large structures behave during an earthquake.

The $21.2 million NEES facility is the largest investment in the National Science Foundation's $81.9 million project to improve understanding of earthquakes and their effects on buildings, bridges, roads, transportation systems and other infrastructure. The project is named in honor of the late California Congressman George E. Brown, Jr., former chairman of the House Science Committee and an advocate in Congress for engineering and science.

The NEES facility is a key node in a nationwide earthquake-engineering "collaboratory"—a network of 15 state-of-the-art laboratories that will allow earthquake engineers and students at different institutions to share resources, collaborate on testing and exploit new computational technologies.

As part of NEES, UB's Structural Engineering and Earthquake Simulation Laboratory (SEESL) underwent a $21.2 million equipment upgrade and expansion of the laboratory from 12,000 to 25,000 square feet. The NSF provided $11.2 million in funding, with $3.2 million coming from the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and $800,000 from its Department of Civil and Structural Engineering. The State University of New York provided $6 million from its construction fund for a new infrastructure to house the lab's new equipment within the expanded SEESL, located in Ketter Hall on UB's North (Amherst) Campus.

Studies at the NEES facility focus primarily on how very large structures behave during earthquakes, providing researchers with new advanced tools to generate new knowledge on how structures and foundations behave during earthquakes. Researchers also study ways to make structures more resistant to terrorist attacks.

The centerpieces of the NEES facility are dual-movable, six-degree-of-freedom shake tables, made by MTS Systems Corp., which easily can be repositioned within the lab, for real-time seismic testing of structures up to 120 feet in length and 30 feet in height.

The shake tables' versatility will enable earthquake engineers to conduct real-time dynamic hybrid testing -- a form of testing being pioneered by UB researchers that sets new standards in earthquake-engineering research. Powered by Mathworks and UB software, it combines shake table testing of portions of a structure with real-time computer simulations of the remainder of the structure. It will provide researchers with a more complete picture of how powerful earthquakes affect very large structures, including bridges and buildings, without having to test an entire structure.

The NEES facility is also equipped with a significantly expanded strong floor and 3-story reaction wall; high-capacity dynamic and static actuators that can apply forces of up to 1,800 tons, and a large-scale geotechnical laminar box for simulating soil-structure interactions during earthquakes.

"The new facility enhances the capabilities of UB's 20-year-old SEESL laboratory, which provided, and will continue to provide, world leadership in advanced protection of bridges, buildings and their contents against severe hazards such as earthquakes, windstorms and man-made disasters," said Reinhorn, Clifford C. Furnas Professor of Structural Engineering at UB and director of SEESL.

"With the new equipment, the laboratory will be able to test large, complex assemblies with a combination of testing equipment and supercomputers to predict with high accuracy the effects of costly disasters and provide adequate protections against them."

The NEES facility is equipped with high-definition television and real-time, networked teleconferencing and telepresence technologies, and is linked by ultra-high-speed Internet connections to other NEES nodes nationwide.

"The synergistic efforts of leading experts working together within the framework of large, coordinated collaborative projects are necessary for research to deliver the advances in knowledge needed to substantially enhance the resilience of communities against earthquakes and other hazards," said Bruneau, UB professor of civil, structural and environmental engineering and director of the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER), headquartered at UB.

The NEES facility team consists of Reinhorn, principal investigator; Bruneau, senior co-principal investigator; Michael Constantinou, Andrew Whittaker and Theva Thevanayagam, co-principal investigators; Andre Filiatrault, technical advisor; Mettupalayam Sivaselvan, project engineer; Mark Pittman, lab manager; Jason Hanley, IT systems manager; Goran Josipovic, IT specialist, and Thomas Albrechcinski, project administrator.

UB has been an international leader in earthquake-engineering research for nearly three decades. In the 1970s, UB civil engineering faculty, recognizing the tremendous social and economic value of this type of research, began to build capabilities in structural dynamics and earthquake engineering. With funding from the State University of New York, UB in 1983 installed its first shake table -- the most versatile in the world at that time -- and established the Structural Engineering and Earthquake Simulation Laboratory (SEESL) inside Ketter Hall.

A $25 million grant from the National Science Foundation and additional SUNY funding in 1986 established at UB the nation's first National Center for Earthquake Engineering Research, now known as the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER). A consortium of researchers from numerous disciplines and institutions throughout the U.S., MCEER, headquartered at UB, is a National Science Foundation "Center of Excellence" in earthquake engineering.

The Federal Highway Administration since 1992 has awarded MCEER grants totaling more than $24 million to study seismic hazards to highways and develop tools and technologies to reduce seismic vulnerability of highway infrastructure. In 1997, MCEER was awarded an unprecedented 10-year NSF grant renewal.

Over the years, SEESL and MCEER have served many institutions and communities throughout the U.S. and around the world in the development of seismic protective systems and improvement of seismic resilience