Facilities

6-DOFs shaking table with a payload of 2 ton. The maximum horizontal accelerations are 2g and the vertical acceleration is 1g. This shaking table is controlled by a Shore Western SC-6000 servo control system and has the remote operation capability through NEESgrid.

The SSTL is also equipped with two uniaxial shakers used for laboratory and field experimentation. The 18″x18″ Quanser Shake Table II earthquake simulator is driven by a 1 Hp servo motor and is capable of driving a 15 kg mass at 2.5 g with a maximum stroke of +/- 7.5 cm. The 18″x18″ shaker custom manufactured by SMI Technology and run by a Quanser Q8 board is mobile and can be used in field experimentation as well and laboratory testing.

The laboratory also has a 14-bay truss structure for structural health monitoring and can be excited by a 22-lb Ling Dynamic Systems’ permanent magnetic shaker. The truss uses Knex-type connections at joints so members can be easily changed.

The SSTL has Imote2 wireless sensors for research on smart sensing technology. Sensor boards conpatibile with this system are capable of measuring acceleration, high resolution acceleration, pressure, strain, temperature, humidity, and general volatge input. Additionally, SSTL is currently involved in the development of a next-generation wireless sensor system.

The lab has two setups, both small and large scale, for conducting real-time hybrid tests. These setups combine fast computer hardware with high-performance hydraulic components. The dynamically rated actuators are controlled by a Schenck-Pegasus 5910 digital servo-hydraulic controller. Real-time control is provided by a PC computer with a dSPACE parallel processing DSP board. High resolution (16 bit) dSPACE I/O boards with 6 channels D/A output and 32 channels A/D input are used. A PC based SigLab spectrum analyzer manufactured by DSP Technology supplements the dSPACE system for data acquisition and analysis. MR damper specimens capable of a maximum force of 0.67 kips and 40 kips are used for the small and large scale setups, respectively.

The lab also has a wide variety of traditional wired sensors, including accelerometers, displacement transducers, and force transducers, as well as signal amplifiers/conditioners, oscilloscopes, etc. The laboratory has three Vibpilot spectrum analyzers manufactured by m&p International for signal recording, processing, and generation. Each of these spectrum analyzers has 8 channels of input which are procesed with a 24 bit A/D. An additional DAQ system is housed in a National Instruments (NI) SCXI chassis and connected to a 16-bit NI high speed A/D data acquisition board. This data acquisition system can measure 40 channels of vibration data with programmable antialiasing filters and simutaneous sampling hold, 8 channels of strain gauge readings, and 32 channels of regular voltage measurements. In addition, the laboratory has more than 20 computers connected directly to the gigabit network. Two NEESPops have been set up to provide NEESgrid functionality. Tele-presence server as well as four PTZ cameras and associated AXIS video servers are also available for tele-observation of various experiments conducted in the laboratory.

The SSTL is also equipped with two mini-MOST modules. The main purpose of the Mini-MOST experiment is to show the capability of major NEESgrid service components using a small-scale physical experiment setup. Comparing with the Multi-site Online Simulation Test (MOST), the Mini-MOST experimental hardware, as implied by its name, is small in size and can be easily packed and shipped to other places. However, the software involved in this experiment is similar to what wasused for the MOST experiment and provides the same level of functionality and services. Therefore, Mini-MOST experiment provides a desirable platform for students and researchers to be familiar with the NEESgrid software and to gain first-hand experience before conducting fullscale experiment. Moreover, the Mini-MOST experiment can also be utilized for the purposes of educational demonstration and software installation debugging.