T-Rex Shaker Truck Earthquakes
Simpson Strong-Tie’s earthquake building may be good for a single test, but the T-Rex shaker truck is designed to generate as many artificial earthquakes as needed. How so? It uses a larger shaker to pound and thud the earth, while changing its vibration orientation from vertical to horizontal at the push of a button.



It changes vibration orientation in order to generate various seismic waves that are recorded by sophisticated sensors placed along the ground surface. Engineers then use this seismic data gathered with T-Rex to determine how to rebuild structures in case of emergency. The 64,000-pound T-Rex was sent to New Zealand over a decade ago to assist earthquake engineers grapple with a seismic challenge following a series of destructive earthquakes that shook its second largest city, Christchurch.

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Designing a quake-resistant building starts with the soil. The stiffness and layering of the soil has a profound effect on the strength of shaking felt during an earthquake. The soil stiffness is quantified by a sheer wave velocity, the speed at which waves generated by the earthquake travel through the soil. Soft soils with slow shear wave velocities tend to amplify shaking during an earthquake,” said Brady Cox, a civil engineer at The University of Texas at Austin.

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