What if engineers could find a structure’s weaknesses before those weaknesses become a real-world failure?
At ERDC’s Structural Testing and Analysis Research (STAR) Facility, researchers use large-scale structural testing to understand how bridges, building components, flood-control infrastructure, protective systems and other structures respond to different types of loading.
We are joined by Dr. Bette Poblete of ERDC’s Geotechnical and Structures Laboratory to explain how researchers combine physical testing, advanced instrumentation and computational modeling to identify failure modes, improve designs and reduce risk before systems move into more expensive field testing.
Topics discussed include why loading speed can change structural behavior (5:47), how high-speed cameras can capture events conventional instruments cannot (16:13), how STAR research has influenced engineering guidance (7:18), and why understanding a damaged structure’s residual capacity may be just as important as knowing whether it survived the initial event (22:08).
For more information, visit PowerofERDCPodcast.org/84-star-facility_resources. Watch a video of this episode at PowerofERDCPodcast.org/84-star-facility_video.
Learn more about the STAR Facility, its structural testing capabilities and opportunities to work with ERDC at https://erdcsolutions.org/structural-testing-and-analysis-research-facility.
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