Natural Hazards Research Summit 2022: NHERI Lehigh Experimental Facility with Large Scale Multi-Directional Hybrid Simulation Testing Capabilities

The NHERI Lehigh Experimental Facility, as part of the NSF-funded Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) program, was established in 2016 as an open-access facility. This facility enables researchers to conduct state-of-art research on natural hazard mitigation in civil infrastructure systems, including high-performance numerical and physical testing to improve the resilience and sustainability of the civil infrastructure against natural hazards. The facility has the unique ability to conduct real-time multi-directional hybrid simulation (RTHS) on large-scale structural systems using 3D non-linear numerical models combined with large-scale physical models of structural and non-structural components. The Lehigh Experimental Facility possesses testbeds that include a lateral load-resisting system characterization testbed, a non-structural component multi-directional dynamic loading simulator, full-scale and reduced-scale damper testbeds, a tsunami and storm surge debris impact force testbed, a soil-foundation structure interaction testbed, and multi-directional shake table testbed.