Outline and Activities of E-Defense, the Three-Dimensional Full-Scale Earthquake Testing Facility

The 1995 South Hyogo Prefecture Earthquake (Kobe Earthquake) severely damaged many structures such as buildings, highways, and foundations. Over 6,000 fatalities were reported. In order to clarify the reason of such structural damage and then to mitigate the earthquake disaster, National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED) and the Science and Technology Agency of Japan (at that time, STA) decided to construct a three-dimensional full-scale earthquake testing facility so as to obtain the real data of structural response during an earthquake. The construction of the testing facility which is nicknamed E-Defense was completed in March 2005. The main component of E-Defense is a large shaking table. The table size is 20 meters by 15 meters in the plan, and the maximum payload that can be tested on E-Defense is 12MN. The maximum horizontal and vertical acceleration for the maximum payload are 9 m/s² and 1.5 m/s², respectively. The maximum velocity and displacement in horizontal are 2 m/s and 1m, respectively. Since the facility started operation, more than 40 experiments have been conducted. In this paper, the outline and the basic performance of the facilities, and research activities using E-Defense until 2010 are summarized.