NHERI Experimental Facilities
Overview
Each year, natural hazards in the U.S. cause hundreds of deaths, disrupt the social and economic fabric of our communities, and cost billions of dollars(opens a new window) in damage. To render our nation and its infrastructure more resilient, NSF has funded the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure, NHERI.
NHERIs seven Experimental Facilities support innovative investigations for mitigating damage caused by hazards such as earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides, wind storms, storm surge, and flooding. Find details below about these shared-use laboratories, located at universities across the country.
Two facilities in the planning phase will address winds, including non-synptic winds, surge, and related hazards.
Quicklinks for Researchers
Required data management plan details for NSF ECI program(opens a new window) researchers: DesignSafe Data Management Plan Guidance.
Facilities Listing
Florida International University
Wall of Wind Facility
The NHERI Wall of Wind (WOW) Experimental Facility (EF) at Florida International University (FIU) was funded by NSF to be a national facility that enables researchers to better understand wind effects on civil infrastructure systems and to prevent wind hazards from becoming community disasters.
Lehigh University
Cyber-Physical Simulation
The NHERI Lehigh EF has a unique portfolio of equipment, instrumentation, infrastructure, testbeds, experimental simulation control protocols, large-scale simulation and testing experience. The strength of the NHERI Lehigh EF is accurate, large-scale, multi-degree-of-freedom and multi-directional simulations of the effects of natural hazard events on civil infrastructure systems (i.e., buildings, bridges, industrial facilities, etc.) with potential soil-foundation effects.
Oregon State University
Wave Research Laboratory
The O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory (HWRL), established at Oregon State University in 1972, is a state-of-the-art coastal engineering research and education center with two specialized large-scale resources for physical model testing of coastal systems subject to the action of tsunamis created by earthquakes and storm surge and waves created by wind storms.
University of California, Davis
Geotechnical Centrifuges
The NHERI Equipment Facility at UC Davis is housed at the Center for Geotechnical Modeling (CGM). The CGM has a long history of providing users, both national and international, with access to world-class geotechnical centrifuge modeling facilities for research on the performance of soil and soil-structure systems affected by earthquake, wave, wind and storm surge loadings.
University of California, San Diego
Earthquake Shake Table
The National Science Foundation sponsored Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) Experimental Facility at the University of California, San Diego provides a large, high performance, outdoor shake table (LHPOST6) to support research in structural and geotechnical earthquake engineering.
University of Florida
Wind Research Facility
The University of Florida (UF) NHERI Experimental Facility provides users access to advanced wind engineering experimental infrastructure. Located in the Powell Family Structures and Materials Laboratory, the NHERI UF EF enables investigators to characterize loading on and dynamic response of a wide range of infrastructure in a large, reconfigurable boundary layer wind tunnel (BLWT).
University of Texas at Austin
Large Mobile Shakers
NHERI@UTexas contributes unique, literally one-of-a-kind, large, mobile dynamic shakers and associated instrumentation to the study and development of novel, in-situ testing methods that can be used to both evaluate the needs of existing infrastructure and optimize the design of future infrastructure, such that our communities become more resilient to earthquakes and other natural hazards.
Future Facilities
NICHE
National Full-Scale Testing Infrastructure for Community Hardening in Extreme Wind, Surge, and Wave Events
NEWRITE(opens a new window)
National Testing Facility for Enhancing Wind Resiliency of Infrastructure in Tornado-Downburst-Gust Front Events