Watch the latest Building It Better, debuting September 29, as UCSD-TV covers a comprehensive test of metal buildings conducted at UCSD’s Englekirk Structural Engineering Center, home of the largest outdoor shake table in North America. You will see some of the most extreme shaking ever shown as three different lightweight metal buildings are subjected to incredible — perhaps even naturally impossible — seismic loads.
Full-scale metal building test specimens like this one were subjected to some serious shaking
Then in October, take a look at how a pioneering wind energy provider, Escondido, California-based Oak Creek Energy Systems, is looking to the future of wind power by collaborating with UCSD professors and students at the Englekirk Center to gather seismic performance data on wind turbine structures in order to advance the next generation of wind turbines. We recently visited Tehachapi Pass, the richest wind energy field in California, to see the future of renewable energy resources evolving right before our eyes. And you’ll get to see it too, along with the most powerful (and humongous!) wind turbines in production – and learn how they are just the tiny siblings of what the future has in store for wind energy.
The future of wind energy will be even bigger and taller than these, already 280 feet high at the turbine