Earthquake Protection

SRI's RESCUE source design Proposed full-scale soil island test bed at NTS

Earthquake protection systems can reduce fatalities and tremendous damage to man-made facilities and yet it is difficult to accurately and systematically test such systems. SRI was sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Nevada Testing Institute to develop a system to simulate ground motion from earthquakes.

The system uses several perforated vertical pipes in the ground. Each pipe contains propellant. A rubber bladder surrounds each pipe. When the propellant is detonated, the high pressure products are vented through the perforated pipe at a low rate and the bladder expands and pushes on the soil. Multiple propellant charges in each pipe produce oscillatory motion as in an earthquake. An array of such sources produces the ground motion of interest.

RESCUE source applied pressure pulse tailoring capability.

Calculated full-scale soil island test bed response spectrum.