Being inside a building during an earthquake is, at best, a little unsettling, but it’s extremely difficult to measure the movement of an entire building. Last year, researchers at MIT were able to use slow motion cameras to visualize how much a tower crane moved during normal conditions, which gave insight into the stress a crane undergoes. Measuring the effects of an earthquake is a little trickier, so the US Geological Survey (USGS) had to get a little creative to capture it.
USGS’ National Strong Motion Program is dedicated to recording the effects earthquakes have on our structures. They currently have sensors loaded in more than 660 ground sites and more than 180 buildings, bridges, dams, and other structural arrays. Most sites, for obvious reasons, are located in the Western US. Each building contains anywhere from 3 sensors (Desert Center, CA’s Hinds Pumping Plant) to 72 (Rincon Hill Tower in San Francisco and UCLA’s Factor Building in Los Angeles).
The Frontier Building is the subject of the video below. Built in 1982, the 219 feet (67m) tall building is the home to many State of Alaska offices in Anchorage. On January 24, 2016, the building was rocked by a 7.1 magnitude earthquake. Thanks to the USGS’ 36 sensors located in and around the building, we are able to see exactly how a building sways, twists, and shakes during a catastrophic event like this. To help visualize the event, the motions have been magnified by 300x their actual movement, so it looks a little more dramatic than it actually was. This research does, however, give designers key insight to real world conditions which could prove or disprove their calculations.
Video below was uploaded to Youtube by USGS.
Last summer, Hilti announced that they had developed their first exoskeleton designed for construction tradespeople in a partnership with Ottobuck, a prosthetics, orthotics, and exoskeleton provider. Earlier this month, Hilti officially released the exoskeleton, announced more details, and published its retail price on their website.