Brace for the quake

Abstract Earthquakes are unpredictable can and result in losses of millions of dollars in property damage and large numbers of fatalities. Most of the structural damage occurs when buildings sway back and forth or deflect. This experiment was conducted to determine if bracing the floors of a multistory building would decrease the amount of deflection thus inferring that a building would be safer during an earthquake. The experiment was performed using multistory buildings with varying amounts of bracing. A shaking table was designed and built to simulate an earthquake. Deflection of each building was recorded with a video camera and measurements of the displacement of the top and base of the building were taken using frame-by-frame video software. Deflections were calculated by measuring the displacement of the top of the building in comparison to the bottom. The data collected from this experiment indicated that the deflection decreased as more bracing was added to the building.