The NHERI at UC Davis facility is located at the Center for Geotechnical Modeling, CGM. Natural hazards engineers employ the facility’s large 9-meter radius and small 1-meter radius centrifuges, equipped with shaking tables, to perform scaled modeling to understand the performance of soil and soil-structure systems affected by earthquake, wave, wind and storm surge loadings.

Did you know? In December 2020, the NHERI at UC Davis facility hosted an international workshop called Frontiers for Hypergravity Experiments and Model Tests, with the aim of discovering more ways to advance science and engineering using hyper gravity experimentation and modeling. The UC Davis team recently released its report on the workshop. The proceedings from this well-attended event, complete with video clips of presentations, are also online.

Did you know? Many researchers at NHERI at UC Davis are affiliated with the NSF-funded Center for Bio-mediated and Bio-inspired Geotechnics, CBBG. For instance, this summer, NHERI at UC Davis hosted CBBG REU students who used the 1 m centrifuge to evaluate microbially induced calcite precipitation (MICP) treatment strategies for liquefaction mitigation.

Students get hands-on experience learning about liquefaction mitigation at the NHERI at UC Davis facility. (Image: NHERI at UC Davis)