The Structural Engineering and Earthquake Simulation Laboratory at UB

Last week, the Scientist for Life class visited the Structural Engineering and Earthquake Simulation Laboratory (SEESL) at the University at Buffalo. Currently, the Scientist for Life students are studying natural disasters and focusing on a variety of topics including earthquakes. Fortunately, we had the opportunity to learn information and tour the laboratory with Dr. Pinar Okumus, an assistant professor for the civil, structural and environmental engineering department.

Originally, the laboratory started as the Structural Engineering Laboratory (SEL), which was created in 1983 at the University at Buffalo. Later on, the laboratory expanded into the Structural Engineering and Earthquake Simulation Laboratory or SEESL, which was founded by Professor Robert L. Ketter. The testing performed in the laboratory helped develop the National Center for Earthquake Engineering Research at UB in 1986. During its beginning years of existence, the laboratory received large grants to expand the maintenance, operations, and studies performed in the lab. Donations to SEESL have positively contributed to the expansion of the laboratory and have brought new equipment to expand earthquake research. In 2004, SEESL completed a $21.2 M expansion. This expansion added two new relocatable 6-degree-of-freedom 50 ton shake tables, advanced large scale dynamic and static actuators, a geotechnical laminar box, and networked controllers that work to a high speed local area network. SEESL contains three earthquake simulators, two stories bi-axial shaking table, strong reaction walls, strong testing floor, laminar box, static and dynamic servo-controlled actuators, hydraulic power supply, local and wide area gigabit networks, tele-presence and tele-operations, and several different testing capabilities.

On behalf of the Scientist for Life class, we truly enjoyed and learned a lot from our visit to the Structural Engineering and Earthquake Simulation Laboratory. To learn more about SEESL, visit their website at http://seesl.buffalo.edu/