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:
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the black smell of spring earth.
No more skulls on our desks
but the pervasive
testing of death....”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“Now I see that going out into the testing ground of men it is the tongue and not the deed that wins the day.”
—Sophocles (497–406/5 B.C.)
“There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in its totality, in its structure: posterity discovers it in the stones with which he built and with which other structures are subsequently built that are frequently better—and so, in the fact that that structure can be demolished and yet still possess value as material.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)