In 1995 the great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake disaster occurred in the Japanese city of Kobe and its vicinity, and more than 6000 people were killed as a result of the collapse of buildings. This was a clear demonstration of how very strong ground motion in the area near a seismic fault can cause severe structural damage beyond that which is usually estimated. It also emphasized the importance of earthquake engineering research in solving such problems as why and how structures collapse in real conditions. In response to this disaster, the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED) and the Science and Technology Agency of the Japanese Government (STA) planned to build a three-dimensional, full-scale, earthquake-testing facility as one of the core research facilities for earthquake disaster prevention. It is hoped to be able to carry large-scale structures and to simulate the process of dynamic collapse using three-dimensional, strong earthquake motion. For this purpose, the NIED and the STA began to develop large actuators and related components in 1995 and completed them in 1998. Through this development and testing, the design and manufacturing techniques of a large actuator system were successfully achieved. After that, the NIED and the STA began the design and construction of the new facility in the scal year of 1998. The construction work is now in progress in Miki City, near Kobe, Japan. It is scheduled to be completed by the beginning of 2005. In this paper, we summarize the performance and features of this new facility and the results of the technical developments.
SUMMARYA three-dimensional seismometer array was installed in the Chiba Experiment Station of the Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo in 1982. The array system consists of 44 three-component accelerometers densely placed both on the ground surface and in boreholes. A complementary system for the measurement of ground and buried pipe strains was also installed at the same site. The array system has been successfully in operation, and more than 160 earthquakes have been recorded. Considering a wide use of these seismograms, the Chiba array database has recently been created comprising twenty-seven major events. This paper describes the Chiba array system and its strong motion database. Results of engineering analysis using the selected records are also presented.
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