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Shocking? TESS Will Be the Judge of That!

The Triaxial Earthquake and Shock Simulator (TESS), located at ERDC's Construction Engineering Research Lab in Champaign, IL. For more than half a century, TESS has been used to push infrastructure components, machines, and military vehicles to their breaking point.

Learn more  about TESS!

Topics:
Instrumentation Measuring Instruments Test & Measurement Testing Procedures

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    Transcript

    00:00:01 [Music] for more than 50 years a unique research capability at the US army engineer research and development center or Eric has been used to push infrastructure components machines and and military vehicles to their breaking point and the triaxle earthquake and shock simulator located at the construction engineering research laboratory in Champagne

    00:00:40 Illinois will continue to advance seismic shock and vibration research for decades to come thanks to continuous upgrades and investment this was built in 1972 as a biil shock test machine and then in ' 94 was upgraded to the trial earthquake and shock simulator it's been used for are primarily for earthquake testing both research projects as well as qualification testing of critical

    00:01:07 equipment that would be installed in hospitals or other critical facilities we've done testing for the national missile defense system critical equipment there we we also do vehicle vibration testing and that's mostly qualification testing for uh vehicles that must remain operational for uh military operations of various sorts then we also Al do shock testing and

    00:01:31 that is both qualification testing as well as uh research projects the simulator's capabilities combined with the team's experience has made it a National Asset that has supported research construction and Manufacturing programs and projects across industry Academia the federal government and the Department of Defense Tess as the facility is known combines High payload

    00:01:54 capability with the ability to deploy both High force and frequency it's able to test very large um specimens for earthquake testing but then also able to do shock testing that uh other hydraulic tables could not performed we've done testing for uh defense Advanced research projects agency and uh defense threat reduction agency and a number of other uh private firms Engineers that are

    00:02:19 responsible for um writing the reports for qualification of equipment that would be installed in hospitals in California as well as uh for uh say the national missile defense system for critical radar sites devastating natural disasters and terrorist attacks have raised awareness of seismic risk to buildings facilities infrastructure and Technology

    00:02:41 installations there is a continuing need for experimental Shake table testing to investigate fundamental structural performance and to assist in verifying results produced by analytical techniques with the team's ability to leverage Test's scalability and adaptability large and small tests can be conducted we tested very large specimens we've tested U air handling

    00:03:03 units that are as long as uh 56 ft we've also um uh tested say uh bee Huts tro constructable buildings uh that are uh 32 by 16 ft and one we tested recently weighed uh 39,000 lb so we extend our Shake table our Shake table itself is just 12T X 12T but we extend it to be much larger than that using large Steel test fixtures Tess's Legacy has been forged through providing critical

    00:03:35 insight for seismic and acoustic research it has helped industry Partners built better the US Army Corps of Engineers built smarter and our military built stronger and there's more work to be done there's a number of different um programs of you know future military systems as well as supporting the private sector that we we are exploring uh optimizing the table for that my

    00:03:59 greatest interest is is looking how we can um optimize the shake table to accommodate um various customers vibration needs [Music]