Engineering research at North Carolina State University could soon pave the way for bridge construction that can withstand strong earthquakes.
The study, currently in its eighth year at N.C. State’s Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering lab is for Alaska’s Department of Transportation.
“If you think about the impact that [bridges] have on commerce, getting people from point A to point B and safety, it is an important thing to consider in high seismic regions,” Mervyn Kowalsky, N.C. State professor of structural engineering, said. “For example, if you have an earthquake in a more remote area and a bridge damaged to the point where it is no longer usable, that has potentially profound impacts.”
Using concrete and rebar, engineers test different column construction and use an actuator to push the column back and forth and simulate an earthquake. Researchers then analyze the different construction to determine the column’s seismic performance.
“We have found that some earthquakes have large pulses and some have lots of reversals, back and forth,” Kowalsky said. “Those things impact bridge columns differently.”
Kowalsky said the goal is to find one construction approach that is less sensitive to the different earthquakes and therefore can with stand different types of seismic activity.
The study has more than a year to go before the findings will be presented to the state of Alaska.
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