Performance of Mobile Hydraulic Shakers at nees@UTexas for Earthquake Studies

Abstract eng:
The U.S. National Science Foundation is supporting a nation-wide earthquake engineering program that is named the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES). NEES is composed of a network of fifteen testing facilities, called Equipment Sites, which are distributed across the United States. The Equipment Site developed at the University of Texas at Austin is named nees@UTexas. There are three mobile shakers with diverse shaking capabilities at nees@UTexas. These three shakers are named T-Rex, Liquidator, and Thumper. T-Rex is capable of generating large dynamic forces in any of three directions (X, Y, or Z directions). Liquidator is designed to be a lower frequency vibrator and is a one-of-a-kind shaker. Thumper is ideal for geophysical testing in urban areas because it is highway-legal and has a moderate force output. Operational since October 2004, nees@UTexas is a 50% shared-use facility. In the past four years, mobile shakers at nees@UTexas have been used in research projects in the areas of: (1) deep shear-wave velocity profiling, (2) in-situ nonlinear shear modulus measurements of soil, (3) in-situ liquefaction tests, (4) soil-foundation-structure interaction studies, and (5) geophysical studies. In this paper, equipment of nees@UTexas is introduced, a comparison between the theoretical force output and measured force output is presented, and examples of previous NEES projects are discussed.

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