Introduction of E-Defense Project With Recent Progress: A 3-D Full-Scale Earthquake Testing Facility Under Construction

After the great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake disaster, the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED) and the Science and Technology Agency of the Japanese Government (STA) planned to build a three-dimensional, full-scale, earthquake-testing facility (E-Defense) as one of the core research facilities for earthquake disaster prevention. It is hoped to be able to carry large-scale structures and to simulate the process of dynamic collapse using three-dimensional, strong earthquake records. For this purpose, the NIED (http://www.bosai.go.jp) has developed large actuators and related components from 1995 and completed them in 1998. After that, the NIED and the STA began the design and construction of the new facility in the fiscal year of 1998, and now, the construction work is in final stage at Miki City, near Kobe, Japan. It is scheduled to be completed by the beginning of 2005. In this paper, the basic performance and features of this new facility and the outline of recent construction work are summarized.