Outreach

Our EOT Program is designed to improve the understanding and appreciation of earthquake engineering practice and research in general, and Fast Hybrid Simulation in particular.

Some of the recent Outreach activities include:

K-12

Classroom Opportunities

Our Outreach Coordinator will visit your classroom and teach the lesson desired, works best if tied into current curriculum. Please plan for about an hour for each lesson; lessons can be linked together if preferred, more detailed instructions will be given upon receipt of tour request.

Earthquake Engineering in the Classroom

Grade Level: 6-12

Materials Required: Laptop, projector, Shake table video and chart documents (2), PowerPoint presentation and Crossword Puzzle (print # of copies needed)

Keywords: Civil Engineers, Earthquakes, Earthquake engineering, cyberinfrastructure

Summary: Students will learn basic earthquake information and the importance of Earthquake Engineering. The major projects civil engineers have accomplished. Explaining how Earthquake engineering deals with the effects of earthquakes on people and their environment and the methods of reducing those effects. Students will learn the sorts of tests that are done in the CU/NEES lab for Earthquake Engineering. Students will run a shake table through a video remote connection and test the durability of a building.

Earth Changes

Grade Level: 4-6

Time Required: 60 minutes

Materials Required: 6" Styrofoam ball for each student, wax crayons, Pangaea map, globe, and pins

Keywords: Earth, continental plates, ring of fire, Pangaea, earthquakes

Summary: Students will learn the many changes that occur within the crust of the Earth as well as the constant changes on the earth's crust, and why they take place. They will learn what the Earth looked like 225 million years ago and how the plates have shifted to present day. They will also learn about tectonic plates and the Ring of Fire.

Earthquake Resistant Buildings (click to see a recent activity)

Grade Level: 6-9

Time Required: 60 minutes

Materials Required: marshmallows (30/each student) toothpicks (30/each student), 2-3 pans of Jell-o for class to share

Keywords: earthquake, engineering, structures

Summary: Students will learn how engineers build structures to withstand damage from an earthquake by building their own structure out of toothpicks and marshmallows. They will then test it on a earthquake simulator (jell-o pan). Understanding that engineers come up with an idea then test it and then re-engineer the structure based on it's performance.

Locating Current Earthquake Activity

Grade Level: 6-9

Time Required: 60 minutes

Materials Required: Computer lab, pencil, and worksheet

Key words: Ring of Fire, Earthquakes, USGS, Richter scale

Summary: Students will learn how to use the computer to locate current earthquake activity. They will also learn how to measure the activity on the Richter scale.

Tour Request

Form to fill out for Tour Request

Laboratory Opportunities

This is a wonderful opportunity to explore the University of Colorado campus and check out the CU/NEES laboratory. We have very unique testing capabilities that peak the interest of many young engineers. This tour is given by our outreach coordinator and with the help of graduate students working in the lab. Demonstrations of material testing and structure testing will be given as well as an introduction to our current research project.

Lab tour and demonstrations on our equipment


Testing of structures on our shake table

Higher Education

Our outreach program has collaborated with campus outreach programs for the purpose of curriculum development, partnering of events, future outreach ideas, establishing relationships within relative organizations etc.

Such organizations include:

• Integrated Teaching Learning Laboratory
• Space Grant
• Fiske Planetarium
• Multicultural and Women in Engineering Program
• College of Engineering
• Middle School Experience Group (Classroom Science Discovery)
• CIRES
• Space Grant
• University Admissions
• Community Relations

Research Experience for Undergraduates:

The NEESreu program is a 10-week summer research program for upper division undergraduate students interested in Civil Engineering, Computer Science/Engineering and/or seismic risk mitigation, visit www.nees.org/NEESreu for more information.

Desktop Hybrid Testing System

Introduction:

While the CU-Boulder NEES site has implemented a complete FHT solution, the high cost and effort involved in setting up and running an FHT test may prohibitive for certain applications, including:

• Live demonstration of the FHT method in offsite locations.
• Interactive experiments or classroom presentations.
• Fast prototyping of new engineering ideas or concepts

To address these problems, a high performance desktop platform for realtime hybrid simulation is being developed at CU NEES. The hardware and software requirements will provide basic FHT functionality with relatively lower cost and more portability than full-scale hybrid test sites.

Overview:

The desktop platform includes a full implementation of the fast hybrid method used in the CU production FHT test lab. A multiple-DOF simulation analyzes the structure while the actuators and instruments (available using LabView VI modules) drive the test specimen and inject measurements back into the simulation, Fig. 2. The simulation method uses an implicit scheme for stability and an iterative solution method to handle nonlinear responses. The simulation and instrumentation are handled by a single computer platform, called the target platform. The target platform uses a real-time operating system to insure a deterministic response for the hybrid test. The target platform sends simulation state and other information over a network to a second computer, called the host computer. The host computer runs a constantly updated visualization to show the states of the simulation structure for debugging and demonstration. The host platform also allows for user interaction to start and stop the simulation, and reconfigure the instrumentation as accessed in LabView. This system is composed of the following:

Hardware:

Software:

• National Instruments Labview & Real-time module.
• Custom Realtime Hybrid Simulation Block or VI to be used in LabView.
• Graphical user interface to facilitate an working understanding of what is happening during a realtime hybrid simulation.

Workshops

Our center conducts at least one workshop every year, typically in the Fall (in anticipation of NEES-R submittal preparation).

Previous workshops held:

• November 2006
• August 2007
• November 2007 (Joint workshop with Berkeley and Lehigh).
• February 2008

Events

http://nees.colorado.edu/Events.php