University of Nevada Earthquake Lab Now World’s 2nd Biggest

There’s a whole lot of shakin’ going on at the University of Nevada, Reno.

UNR’s seismic-simulation facility became the largest in the United States and second largest in the world in March with an expansion that included moving three new 27-ton shake table tops into the school’s new Earthquake Engineering Laboratory.

The shake table tops, called platens, are large surfaces onto which structures are attached and then shaken to determine their ability to withstand damage from earthquakes. Scientists use them to conduct simulations for governments and private industry to test new techniques to build safer bridges, highways and housing.

Each one of the three tables can carry 50 tons of weight that can shake a structure forward and back just like a real earthquake.

Ian Buckle, a civil engineering professor and director of the seismic laboratory, said the new Earthquake Engineering Laboratory has more than doubled the space of the laboratory and is about 20 feet taller than the UNR’s existing Large-scale Structures Laboratory.

That will allow larger structures to be tested, and will provide more reliable results, he said.

The structure’s $20 million price tag was paid for by $12.1 million from the U.S. Department of Commerce and $3.1 million from the U.S. Department of Energy. An additional $3.1 million came from donors and other sources.

Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters USA Education