Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure: Experimental Facility with Geotechnical Centrifuges 2021-2025

The Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a distributed, multi-user national facility to provide the natural hazards engineering research community with access to research infrastructure that includes earthquake and wind engineering experimental facilities, cyberinfrastructure (CI), computational modeling and simulation tools, high performance computing resources, and research data, as well as education and community outreach activities. Originally funded under NSF 14-605 and NSF 15-598, NHERI has operated since 2015 through separate, but coordinated, five-year research infrastructure awards for a Network Coordination Office, CI, Computational Modeling and Simulation Center, and Experimental Facilities, including a post-disaster, rapid response research facility.

Information about NHERI resources are available at the NHERI web portal (https://www.DesignSafe-ci.org). Awards made for NHERI contribute to NSF's role in the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) and the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program (NWIRP). This award will renew the NHERI Experimental Facility at the University of California-Davis from January 1, 2021, to September 30, 2025.

Through this award, the University of California-Davis will provide access to their experimental resources, user services, and data management infrastructure for NSF-supported research and education awards. This facility will provide users with access to geotechnical modeling resources that include 9-meter and 1-meter radius centrifuges, both with shake tables.

Centrifuges enable the use of reduced-scale models to accurately capture the responses of soil masses that are many times larger than is possible at full scale on even the largest shake tables. The 9-meter centrifuge has the largest radius of any centrifuge with a shake table worldwide, and can carry a soil payload of 1550 kilograms. Performing experiments on detailed, reduced-scale models, outfitted with large numbers of sensors, will enable major scientific and engineering advances for a broad range of soil and soil-structure systems, such as building foundations, bridge foundations, near-shore and off-shore energy infrastructure foundations, underground structures, pipelines, ground improvement technologies, wharves, embankment dams, and levee systems.

Research can be performed that will enable major advances in the ability of engineers to predict and improve the performance of soil and soil-structure systems affected by earthquake, wave, wind, and storm surge loadings. Research performed by the facility's broad base of users will contribute to the economic competitiveness of the United States, better infrastructure management, and improved well-being of citizens through, for example, modified building codes, new seismic design criteria, and partnering projects for major infrastructure systems.

Experimental data generated from research conducted at this facility will be archived in the Data Depot on the NHERI web portal.

Together, the 9-meter and 1-meter radius geotechnical centrifuges will provide the unique and versatile modeling capabilities required for realizing major scientific and engineering advances in predicting and improving the performance of soil and soil-structure systems affected by natural hazard loadings. Available resources at the centrifuge facility will provide the capability to construct soil and soil-structure models with holistic system levels of complexity and obtain measurements of complex local mechanisms through inverse analyses of data from dense instrumentation arrays.

The centrifuge facility will enable the formation of basic science knowledge; the validation of advanced computational models from the component to holistic system level; the validation of transformative mitigation strategies; and the integration of research, education, and outreach activities in the training of a diverse workforce. The facility will conduct annual user workshops and will host Research Experiences for Undergraduate students.

The facility's user support will: (1) help users improve their experimental investigations through personalized guidance and support at the proposal, design, construction, testing, and interpretation phases of their research; (2) maintain a parallel and uninterrupted workflow that maximizes scheduling flexibility; (3) maintain, improve, and develop technical resources for the facility; (4) integrate safety and risk awareness into routine operational practices; (5) provide cybersecurity and data management; (6) provide mentoring and technical training for research team members; (7) promote research opportunities to key interest groups to broaden and diversify the user base; (8) manage maintenance cycles to avoid impacting user schedules; and (9) engage in key outreach activities with the national and international hazards research communities.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.