Displacement Acquisition for the NEESR:BNCS Building Shaketable Test via GPS Sensors

In this project the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (led by Yehuda Bock, PI) and the Department of Structural Engineering (led by Jose Restrepo, Co-Investigator) have gathered perishable data from five prototype collocated GPS accelerometer sensor packages on the NSF-funded CMMI 0936505 BNCS landmark project. This landmark project involved earthquake and post-earthquake fire testing of a five-story building built at full-scale and completely furnished with a number of nonstructural components (NCS), including a functioning passenger elevator, partition walls, cladding and glazing systems, piping, ceiling, sprinklers, building contents, as well as passive and active fire systems. The NEES-UCSD and NEES-UCLA equipment sites combine to realize this unique opportunity and hence advance our understanding of the full-scale dynamic response and kinematic interaction of complex structural and nonstructural components and systems. Post-earthquake fire and life safety performance of both the structure and NCSs will be evaluated by conducting non-thermal and live fire testing. In addition, this project investigated the potential for protecting critical NCS systems using, for example, damping and/or isolation methods. Finally, data from this unique experiment will be used to compare with earthquake performance predictions using available commercial and research computational modeling platforms. Findings from these efforts are being immediately translated to practice. Testing started April 16 2012 and ended May 13 2013. Lateral and vertical displacements were obtained with the sensor packages for a number of strong motion tests conducted on this building. This project allowed the proof testing of the new sensors.