Acquisition of uniaxial shaking table for dynamic testing of structural elements
 

Status

 Complete                                     View Final Report: PDF
 

Sequential Number

 RE368
 

Matching Research Agency

 Missouri University of Science and Technology
 

Principal Investigator

Mohamed ElGawady
Associate Professor
Missouri University of Science and Technology
Rolla MO 65409
p 573-341-4461
f 573-341-4729
elgawadym@mst.edu
 

Student Involvement

 Numerous Masters and Ph.D. students as well as laboratory technicians will use this equipment in their research projects.
   

Project Number

 00043822
 

Project Objective

This equipment purchase will enable the development and implementation of several types of innovative and sustainable structural elements for transportation infrastructure. For example, the development of durable accelerated bridge construction (ABC) that can sustain damage due to extreme events and seismic behavior of existing bridge columns are of prime interests. ABC reduces initial construction cost, construction time from months to days, and traffic disruption and lane closures. In addition, ABC improves work zone safety, constructability, and construction quality leading to long lasting bridges. ABC has a high level of sustainability and lower environmental impacts. It has lower life-cycle costs by using materials more efficiently and reducing construction waste. Finally, ABC reduces noise, leakage of wet concrete into waterways leading to harm to migrating fish, and fuel consumption due to congestion and rerouting. In particular the seismic behavior of innovative structural systems will be investigated. This includes hollow-core ultra-high performance segmental bridge columns, double-skin bridge columns, behavior of columns constructed out of self-consolidated concrete. Moreover, bridge girder movement criterion for ABC will be investigated as well.   
 

Anticipated Benefits

The new shaking table will complement the excellent testing facility at Missouri S&T. It will allow faculty and students from Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, and Chemical & Biochemical Engineering to investigate the dynamic behavior of different structural and non-structural elements
 

Milestones
Project Start Date:
 08/01/2013
Project End Date: 12/31/2013
 

Relationship to other Research/Projects

 The equipment will be useful in a list of on-going and pending projects.

 

Functions/uses of the equipment

 This request is for the acquisition of a uniaxial shaking table for dynamic testing of structural elements. The new shaking table has a 5 x 5
platform, +/- 6 in stroke, and 10 ton payload.
 

Benefit to CTIS research

Several on-going projects will benefits from using the new shaking table. These projects were planned to be carried out using static cyclic testing.
However, static cyclic testing does not necessary reflects the true behavior of a structural element under earthquake ground motion. Static cyclic testing has several limitations including determination of damping characteristics and strain rate effects. Both of them are essential characteristics to investigate the dynamic behavior of structural elements. The on-going projects that will benefit from the new shaking table focus on the development of several types of
innovative and sustainable structural elements that can sustain damage due earthquake ground motions as well as accelerate bridge systems. Moreover, the tested elements will be monitored using innovative sensors.