policy
KAIST dedicated the KOCED Geo-Centrifuge Experiment Center for researches in monitoring natural disasters such as earthquake and embankment collapse through miniature simulation tests on Wednesday (April 9) after a two-year construction work.
The experiment center is part of the Korea Construction Engineering Development Collaboratory Program (KOCED) which has been sponsored by the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs to build an infrastructure for construction engineering researches at a national level. The ministry plans to build a total of 5 similar centers nationwide by the end of the year.
On hand at the dedication ceremony were Jae-Choon Lee, President of the Korea Institute of Construction & Transportation Technology Evaluation and Planning, KAIST President Nam-Pyo Suh, and scores of experts and administration officials.
The construction of the five-story building on an area of about 3,328 square meters cost 8.4 billion won (US$6.3 million).
The center is expected to serve as a major laboratory in the field of geotechnical engineering. It is equipped with such state-of-the-art facilities as geocentrifuge, a useful tool for studying flow in unsaturated soil under well-controlled, repeatable conditions, a bidirectional shaking-table that can reproduce earthquake-like wave; and robots that can reproduce construction procedures by remote control.
Geocentrifuge experiment allows detecting ground and structure motions easily and rapidly by simulation tests. Thus, it is widely used for various geotechnical engineering researches such as evaluation of seismic safety, soft ground movement, slope stability analysis, etc. The causes of the embankment collapse in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 were also revealed by the geocentrifuge experiment.
The geocentrifuge research facility is available for use by outside researchers, so scientists from other universities, research institutes and corporations can perform research and test their scientific and engineering hypotheses.
The center is divided into two sections, experiment building and research building. The experiment building is composed of a geocentrifuge laboratory, model-making rooms, workshops, a geotechnical engineering laboratory and specimen storehouse, while the research building has a control room, a video conference room, an electronic library and research rooms.
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