The 2019 E-Defense shake-table test of a large-scale 3-story disaster management center

In December 2019, shake-table tests of a 3-story disaster management center were performed at E-Defense in Japan as part of the Tokyo Metropolitan Resilience Project. This large-scale test was a collaboration between universities and research institutes in Japan and the US NHERI Natural Hazards Reconnaissance (RAPID) facility. Research objectives include validating resilient structural and non-structural element detailing and verifying the accuracy of a newly proposed structural health monitoring technique.\nThe specimen was a reinforced concrete frame building, with spandrel walls cast to be monolithic with frame elements to provide additional strength and stiffness. Special detailing was provided to prevent early wall damage caused by bar buckling. The building remained mostly elastic during an excitation equivalent to a severe earthquake motion defined in the Japanese Building Standard Law and survived multiple 50%-60% more severe events without collapsing. This demonstrates that the spandrel wall detailing was a good solution for buildings requiring post-disaster functionality.\nOther non-structural elements, such as ceilings, windows, and wall tiles, were installed. Two variants of each were constructed, one using typical Japanese detailing and another using more resilient detailing (e.g., flexible adhesive for wall tiles). In all cases, the more resilient variant performed better, demonstrating the effectiveness of the low-damage detailing.\nVarious structural health monitoring (SHM) methods were applied, such as an inexpensive acceleration sensor network and 3D scanning technology. A new technique was applied to extract the building’s capacity curve from recorded acceleration response to classified damage. The results agreed well with resource tensive visual inspections demonstrating the benefits of adopting the new SHM technique in reducing resources required for post-earthquake damage evaluations.\nOverall, the shake-table test provided a great opportunity to observe the behavior of a whole building\nsystem and provided means to cover a wide range of research disciplines effectively. However, methods to\nconsider soil-structure-interaction effects should be developed for future tests to ensure more realistic building\nsimulations.