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Testing Floor

The Newmark testing floor encompasses a 15 x 40 m² (49.2 x 131.2 ft²) area. The infrastructure of the floor is a 5 m (16.4 ft) deep concrete box girder design (right). The girder mass is approximately 2.72 x 10⁶ kg (3 x 10³ tons) and has been implemented for use on tests of full-scale bridge girders. The floor also acts as an effective reaction structure for dynamic experiments and it is now being used to support the new 6.80 x 10⁵ kg cranes with capacities of 1.81 x 10⁴ kg (20 tons) and 3.62 x 10⁴ kg (40 tons) with a clear height of 9 m (29.5 ft).

In the testing area, the top slab is perforated 0.914 m (3 ft) on center by 75 mm (2 15/16 in) holes (left). The placement of the holes accommodates the installation of modular loading equipment for a variety of tests with vertical and horizontal loading. The bottom slab and basement tunnel walls are equipped with attachments for the installation of 3-dimensional loading equipment. Located in the basement are a pair of pumps, with a combined capacity of 2.04 x 10⁷ m³/s (5.4 x 10³ gal/s), that deliver hydraulic-ram fluid under pressure of 21 MPa (3 ksi) through an extensive piping network to all points on the testing floor (below). The hydraulic power supply (HPS) is being upgraded to 4.53 x 10⁷ m³/s (1.2 x 10⁴ gal/s).

Servo-controlled hydraulic actuators are available to meet virtually any demand of structural testing in terms of both load and displacement capacities. A biaxial INSTRON 8500 Plus controller can be used to drive either one or two actuators in any of three control modes: position, load, or strain. This controller is also equipped with a PC for both the use of control and for acquiring data, using LabView software, from 224 channels. The number of channels may be extended up to 1056 .