Engineers simulate large quake on curved bridge (w/ video)
Friday, September 23, 2011 - 10:30
in Physics & Chemistry
Six full-size pickup trucks took a wild ride on a 16-foot-high steel bridge when it shook violently in a series of never-before-conducted experiments to investigate the seismic behavior of a curved bridge with vehicles in place. The 145-foot-long, 162-ton steel and concrete bridge was built atop four large, 14-foot by 14-foot, hydraulic shake tables in the University of Nevada, Reno's world-renowned Large-Scale Structures Earthquake Engineering Laboratory.