Fake hospital built to test seismic defenses

BBC : To test the effectiveness of “shake tables,” which are already in use in buildings in earthquake-prone Japan, engineers in California built a fully equipped, mock hospital on top of rubber bearings, or “base isolators.” “What the bearings do is uncouple the building from the motion of the ground during an earthquake, like putting the building on roller skates,” said Tara Hutchinson at the University of California, San Diego. After subjecting the building to the same motions as those recorded during the 6.7-magnitude Los Angeles earthquake of 1994 and the 8.8-magnitude Chile earthquake of 2010, the engineers found that the shake table successfully protected the building, including its elevators, stairs, medical equipment, and other machinery. Base isolators have already been retrofitted under several California government buildings.