The research taking place on the campus of the University of Nevada-Reno is intended to help scientists, architects and engineers save lives by designing buildings and bridges that are more resistant to a temblor's fury. Louis Wiener Jr. Large Scale Structures Laboratory puts Nevada in the forefront of research into ways to avoid the widespread destruction of a major quake. Nevada is the third most seismically active state in the nation, behind California and Alaska, according to UNR seismology professor James N. Brune. But since Nevada's quakes are widely scattered, he said, its residents are one-tenth as likely to experience an earthquake as people concentrated in metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles or the Bay Area.
Damage caused by any earthquake depends directly on the type of soil.
In a 1989 California quake centered under a remote peak of Loma Prieta in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the areas that were built on fill were much harder hit than those on natural soil and rock. The quake registered a magnitude 7.1 and took out a span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge 60 miles away. The lab is half the size of a football field and uses hydraulic power to simulate the destructive ground movement of a major quake. One experiment is testing different types of bridge columns to find one that seems least likely to fail in an earthquake. Another seeks ways to keep girder welds from cracking under stress.