Welcome to the University at Buffalo's NEES Equipment Site

The University at Buffalo's (UB) Structural Engineering and Earthquake Simulation Laboratory (SEESL) is hosting a key equipment site, NEES@buffalo, in a nationwide earthquake engineering "collaboratory" - the National Science Foundation's "George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation" (NEES). In this network, earthquake engineers and students located at different institutions are able to share resources, collaborate on testing, and exploit new computational technologies.

The SEESL facility has following capabilities which are available to NEES and non-NEES participants:

Three Earthquake Simulators, known also as Shake Tables:
- Two relocatable 7.0m x7.0m platforms with six-degrees-of-freedom, 50 tons payload each
- One 3.6m x 3.6m with five-degrees of freedom, 50 tons payload
A two stories bi-axial Shaking Table system used as Non-structural Component Simulator
A 175 m² Strong Reaction Wall for reactions to horizontal loading devices (actuators) for large scale testing
A 340 m² Strong Testing Floor for vertical reactions and tie downs of large scale models
A bi-axial Laminar Box for 1.0 g soil testing
Reconfigurable assemblies of Static and Dynamic Servo-controlled Actuators with advanced control systems (STS, Flextest, etc)
A High Performance Hydraulic Power Supply with flow exceeding 6000 litters per minute (1600 gallons per minute)
High speed wide band Local and Wide Area Gigabit Networks interfaced and supported by with NEESit services
Tele-presence & Tele-operations capabilities for local and wide area collaborations in real time
Advanced Dynamic, Pseudo-dynamic, and Static Testing Capabilities including a generic advanced procedure Real Time Dynamic Hybrid Testing (RTDHT)

A detailed description of the facility, its components, and procedures of use can be found in the Lab Manual.

What's New

Hybrid Simulation of Steel Moment Frame to Collapse

Wednesday, July 29, 2009:at 8:00 AM EST, 21:00 JST, we will be conducting a geographically distributed hybrid simulation of a four story steel moment frame building subjected to the 1995 JR Takatori record at 100% scale. The building model is based on the four story steel moment frame building tested to collapse at E-Defense, Japan in September 2007.

For more information, please, go here.

UB “Science Exploration Day” 2009 at SEESL

Wednesday, March 11, 2009 Approximately 40 Western New York high school students, participating in UB’s-23rd “Science Exploration Day” toured UB’s Structural Engineering and Earthquake Simulation Laboratory (SEESL), in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering (CSEE). They also observed a simulated earthquake, employing a “Mini-Shake Table”, subjecting a sub-scale 27-story building to a seismographic record from the 1995 Kobe Earthquake. For more information please go here.

UB-NEES Hosts NEES Board of Directors

August 14, 2008the UB-NEES site hosted a visit for the NEES Board of Directors who are holding their quarterly board meeting in Buffalo, N.Y. on August 15, 2008. The following eight Board Members attended the visit: Roberto Leon, John Bobbitt, Shirley Dyke, JoAnn Browning, Jim Myers, Julio Ramirez, Jim Ricles and Ken Stoke. Also in attendance were Dr. Joy Pauschke, NSF’s-NEES Program Director and Dr. Steve McCabe, CEO of NEESInc.
For more information click here

NEESports

August 4, 2008 NEES@Buffalo will begin testing the 1:20 port crane scale model as a part of Seismic Preformance of Cranes project which forms part of NEESGC - Seismic Risk Management for Port Systems project.
The model will be subjected to a suite of ground motions that are representative of the criteria used for the design of port structures. The suite of ground motions consist of two operating level earthquakes, two contingency level earthquakes, and ground motions recorded on a wharf at the Port of Oakland during the Loma Prieta earthquake.
For more information and to view Live video of the testing, click here

Dedication of the University at Buffalo Nonstructural Components Simulator (UB-NCS)

October 12, 2007 MCEER, NEES and SEESL hosted a Symposium on Seismic Regulations and Challenges for Protecting Building Equipment, Components & Operations. This program marked the dedication of the University at Buffalo's new Nonstructural Components Simulator (UB-NCS). The Symposium, which was free and open to building equipment manufacturers, engineers and related practitioners, aimed to help improve understanding of recent changes to building design codes, which now require seismic qualification of mechanical and electrical equipment. The Symposium was followed by a dedication and demonstration of the UB-NCS, which provides unique capabilities to help address equipment qualification issues.

Arhived webcasts of symposium and demonstration.
For a full description please, click here.
For more information on NCS, please click here

NEESCollapse

August 9, 2007: NEESCollapse project has been completed.
After Phase I, Frame #1 collapsed as predicted.
After Phase II, Frame #2 collapsed at the same level of intensity as Frame #1 using Canoga Park record

For more information on NEESCollapse project, please, click here.

NEESCollapse

July 27, 2007: The Assembly of Phase II has been completed.
After Phase I, the structure has collapsed as predicted (Figure 9)
For Phase II, assembly of collapse frame #2 has been completed
Installation and calibration of main instrumentation has been completed

For more information on NEESCollapse project, please, click here.

NEESCollapse

July 06, 2007: The NEESCollapse project has been constructed.
Instrumentation and calibration of main instruments has been completed
White noise and pluse type test are being conducted for system indentification.
The structure has been subjected to low intensity Canoga Park ground motion for evaluation of elastic behaviour

For more information on NEESCollapse project, please, click here.

Two awards for nees@Buffalo

June 5, 2007 NEES@Buffalo will be acknowledged at the NEES 5^th Annual Meeting with two awards celebrating its contributions to the Earthquake Engineering Research community.

First, the “Outstanding Service to Researchers” award will be provided for the service provided to the NEESwood project.
Second, the “Most Effective Education Outreach and Training” award for “A Unique Educational Experience for Community College Students in the Engineering and Construction of Woodframe Structures for Seismic Performance.”

For more information, please, click here.

NEESCollapse

May 15, 2007 NEESCollapse project objectives are: to document a comprehensive collapse experiment with data that covers the range of response of a 4 – story steel frame structure from elastic behavior to incipient collapse, to evaluate effectiveness of analytical models that model explicitly deterioration and to generate landmark experimental data to be used by all project participants
For more information on NEESCollapse project, please, click here.

NEESPiles

May 9, 2007 as a part of the NEESPiles project sponsored by the NSF a slope-ground (2 ° incline) liquefaction test will be conducted on Thursday, May 10 at 10:00 am EDT, using the laminar box. In this test the laminar box is filled with saturated loose sand up to a height of approximately 20 feet, and subjected to a sinusoidal 1-D ground motion at the base with a peak horizontal acceleration of about 0.3g.

NSF Highlight: NCS

April 18, 2007 Under extended NSF funding (Award CMS-0429331), the UB-NEES Equipment Site developed a unique Nonstructural Component Simulator (NCS). The NCS is a system of modular and versatile two-level shake-table platforms for experimental performance evaluation of nonstructural components and equipment under realistic full-scale floor seismic induced motions....

For a full document please, please click here.
For more information on NCS, please click here

NEESPiles

November 16, 2006 as a part of the NEESPiles project sponsored by the NSF a level-ground liquefaction test will be conducted using the laminar box. In this test the laminar box is filled with saturated loose sand up to a height of approximately 17 feet, and subjected to a sinusoidal 1-D ground motion at the base with a peak horizontal acceleration of about 0.3g.

The test will be webcast live.

NEESWood Final Test

Tuesday, November 14, 2006 The final test of the NEESWood project was conducted in the presence of NSF and UB dignitaries and over 20 media crews. The final test was a Northridge Earthquke, Rinaldi Record at 100% force.

To view the videos of this test, please, click here.