Testing of Large Structures
Building structures or large nonbuilding structures (such as dams and bridges) are rarely subjected to destructive testing due to the prohibitive cost of constructing a building, or a scale model of a building, just to destroy it.
Earthquake engineering requires a good understanding of how structures will perform at earthquakes. Destructive tests are more frequently carried out for structures which are to be constructed in earthquake zones. Such tests are sometimes referred to as crash tests, and they are carried out to verify the designed seismic performance of a new building, or the actual performance of an existing building. The tests are, mostly, carried out on a platform called a shake-table which is designed to shake in the same manner as an earthquake. Results of those tests often include the corresponding shake-table videos.
Testing of structures in earthquakes is increasingly done by modelling the structure using specialist finite element software.
Read more about this topic: Destructive Testing
Famous quotes containing the words testing of, testing, large and/or structures:
“In the gold mouth of a flower
the black smell of spring earth.
No more skulls on our desks
but the pervasive
testing of death....”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“Bourbon’s the only drink. You can take all that champagne stuff and pour it down the English Channel. Well, why wait 80 years before you can drink the stuff? Great vineyards, huge barrels aging forever, poor little old monks running around testing it, just so some woman in Tulsa, Oklahoma can say it tickles her nose.”
—John Michael Hayes (b.1919)
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all begin well, for in our youth there is nothing we
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—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“If there are people who feel that God wants them to change the structures of society, that is something between them and their God. We must serve him in whatever way we are called. I am called to help the individual; to love each poor person. Not to deal with institutions. I am in no position to judge.”
—Mother Teresa (b. 1910)