The performance of a structure could not be known if an actual earthquake does not occur. Since big earthquake will happen only once in several hundreds years in a city, we cannot know a true performance of the structures under a big earthquake. It is very useful in designing a new structure or knowing the performance of existing structures to conduct structural experiments. Topics dealt in this course include:
(1) Introduction to experiments
(2) Size of test specimens and scale effects
(3) Loading system and supporting system of test specimens
(4) Measurements of strain, deformation and acceleration
(5) Static loading tests
(6) Dynamic loading tests