SCEC INSTANeT News
	CUREe-Caltech Woodframe Project: Online Video of Shake Table Tests of a Two-Story House

On Friday, April 28th a demonstration earthquake test was conducted at the University of California, San Diego. The test was part of the $ 7 million CUREe-Caltech Woodframe Project. UCSD Structural Engineers are performing earthquake tests on a two-story, 640 square-foot full-scale woodframe house. The house has been built on top of a shake table, and researchers shook the house to simulate ground motions that occurred during the 1994 Northridge earthquake near Los Angeles. Information from 300 sensors on the building will be used to create computer models to aid in evaluating new building technologies and design methods. The Shake Table Test was webcast live on the CUREe website, http://www.curee.org. Video highlights are available now. The project, funded mainly by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) through a grant administered by the California Office of Emergency Services (OES), is aimed at developing reliable and economical ways to improve woodframe building performance in earthquakes. The project was proposed after the Northridge event when more than $20 billion in property damage occurred to woodframe homes. Twenty-five people died because of building damage in that earthquake, and all but one of the fatalities occurred in this kind of construction.

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