Shaking Up an Old Building

While residents across California prepared for the “big one” during the Great California Shakeout on Nov. 13, UC San Diego engineers simulated their own earthquake in order to devise better retrofit strategies for some of California’s oldest buildings.

The researchers simulated ground motions based on the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in California, which measured 7.1 in magnitude. During the tests, the engineers subjected a 3-story, masonry-infilled, reinforced concrete frame representing structures built in California in the 1920s to a series of seismic events. This is the largest specimen of this type ever tested on a shake table.

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