Infrastructure

An inherent advantage of the proposed research exchange scheme is that apart from the prescribed human mobility, the nature of the particular joint research to be conducted is such that the entire available infrastructure will be either linked and coordinated in (nearly) real time during the main geographically distributed testing or will contribute in the reference experimental campaign. It is therefore believed that the partnership of EXCHANGE-Risk is specifically constituted of complementary facilities and entities that can create a long lasting network, offering complementary and integrated high-level research in the European research community. A summary of the infrastructure that will be utilized in the framework of the Geographically Distributed Hybrid Testing of a soil-pile system subjected to multiple-support excitation is provided below.


UoToronto Blue Gene/Q supercomputer

The IBM Blue Gene/Q supercomputer located at U of T’s high performance computing facilities has been named the fastest in Canada and 67th fastest on the TOP500 list of the world’s top supercomputers. With more than 40,000 water-cooled processors, the supercomputer has the equivalent processing power of three million smartphones, or 6,500 new, high-end laptops. Compared to Canada's previous top supercomputer, it's approximately 30 per cent faster, 10 times smaller and uses five times less electricity. It will be used to compute the large scale seismic ground displacements that will multiply excite the pipe specimen at UOB at five locations

UoBristol Experimental Facility

Earthquake and Large Structures (EQUALS) Laboratory is the UK’s largest dynamic test laboratory that specialises in earthquake engineering. The facilities contained include a six degree of freedom shaking table surrounded by a strong floor and adjacent strong walls. The role and significance of the EQUALS infrastructure is demonstrated by discussion of a number of recent and ongoing projects. Subject areas encompassed include inclined cable dynamics, human-structure interaction, multiple support excitation, pile-soil interaction, non-linear self-aligning structures and corroded reinforced concrete. The five single axis shaking table experimental rig will be used to excite the pipe with the ground motions computed at UOT.

UoPatras Experimental Facility

The Structures Lab is the largest and best equipped structural lab in Greece, comprising a strong floor and two strong walls used for PsD testing of subassemblies/small structures. The Shake Table facility comprises a 3x5m, uniaxial shake table of 10-ton capacity. Computational facilities comprise multi-node arrays for parallel processing. A previously tested pipe connection will act as the 6th point of the distributed testing.