Mass Timber Structure to be Tallest Full-Scale Building Tested on San Diego Earthquake Simulator

The University of California San Diego will be hosting and conducting a test on one of the world’s two largest earthquake simulators late in April. Known as the Tallwood project, it calls for the construction of the tallest full-scale building—a 10-story structure made of cross-laminated timber—to be built and tested on the earthquake simulator, or shake table.

The shake table will simulate earthquake motions recorded during prior earthquakes covering a range of magnitudes on the Richter Scale, from magnitude 4 to 8, including various iterations of the 6.7 magnitude Northridge earthquake which struck Los Angeles in 1994. This will be accomplished by accelerating the table to at least 1g, which could accelerate the top of the building to as much as 3gs. For reference, on average, modern roller coasters produce 4g of peak acceleration.

The shake table can carry and shake structures weighing up to 2000 metric tons, or 4.5 million pounds—roughly the weight of 1300 sedan cars. This makes the earthquake simulator capable of carrying the largest payload in the world. It is also the only large-scale earthquake table in the world located outdoors.

The table was recently upgraded thanks to $17 million in NSF funding and is now able to reproduce the full 3D ground motions that occur during earthquakes, when the ground is moving in all six degrees of freedom—longitudinal, lateral, vertical, roll, pitch, and yaw.