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ambience: cranes pulling cables, noise of giant sandbox
Scientists are working on new generation of pipeline which won’t rupture during a natural disaster. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet. We’re at Cornell University, where researchers have built what looks like a giant sandbox. Why? Well, to simulate what happens to an underground pipeline during a landslide, or an earthquake. Tom O’ Rourke, professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering., is overseeing today’s experiment.
“The sound that you hear is the sound of the overhead crane pulling on the steel cable, which is drawing one side of the box relative to the other side of the box. This creates the type of ground rupture we would expect to find during an earthquake.”
“As the movement occurs, there is a very clear and dramatic rupture where one box is moving relative to the other, and as the forces are being transmitted between the ground and the pipeline, there are fissures and cracks developing in the earth, clearly apparent at the surface ”
O’Rourke says that the data gathered from these experiments will show precisely where an underground pipeline is most likely to fail.
“We are able to recreate, completely, the kinds of conditions of ground rupture and soil structure interaction that would actually occur during an earthquake.”
. . . .providing designers with the information they need to create safer underground pipelines in the future. Please visit our website at pulseplanet.com. Pulse of the Planet is presented with support provided by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.
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