Professor, Students Simulate Earthquake Fault Lines
What kind of damage do underground pipes sustain during an earthquake? This summer, a civil engineering professor and students from Merrimack College aimed to find out by focusing on utility pipelines (water, gas, etc.) and systems that affect safety and health after an earthquake.
Dr. Aaron Bradshaw, assistant professor of civil engineering at Merrimack College, and students: Stephanie Kearns ’12, Richard Matson ’11, and Gail daSilva ’10 spent most of June at Cornell University’s NEES pipeline testing facility (http://nees.cornell.edu/index.htm), which consists of a 40ft long rectangular box, split transversely in half - half of the box remains stationary, while the other half is moved laterally to simulate an earthquake fault.
How did they simulate earthquake faulting?
- They buried a pipe across the fault line and then subjected it to lateral ground displacements;
- Sensors attached to the pipeline recorded information about the condition of the pipe while it was being tested;
- The experiment took weeks to set up by a specialized team, and only about four minutes to test.
In 2007, Merrimack’s Bradshaw, and Radoslaw Michalowski, Russell Green, and Jerome Lynch from the University of Michigan; and Jason Weiss from Purdue University, were awarded a $1.6 million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fund this project entitled “Damage Detection and Health Monitoring of Buried Pipelines after Earthquake-Induced Ground Movement.”
Comments from civil engineering student Richard Matson
“I felt I was playing a huge part in this project along with everyone else. We worked side-by-side with professional engineers, professors and graduate students. The work we did was very delicate and labor intensive, but worth every moment. I gained improved leadership and communication skills, team work, and valuable hands on experience on how to connect concrete pipelines. Overall, the month spent at Cornell was very exciting and rewarding.”
Photo Caption: Pictured here, Merrimack College students Gail daSilva (left), Richard Matson (center), and Stephanie Kearns (right) stand with John Davis, a technical support staff member at the Cornell facility.
Media Contact: To learn more about this project, contact Heather Notaro in public relations at (978) 837-5195 or heather.notaro@merrimack.edu.
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