There is a structure-damaging earthquake scheduled to happen on Fresno State̢۪s campus early next year.

But the University Student Union and the Henry Madden Library are in no danger of collapsing. The earthquake will be happening on a large shaker table inside a lab located in the Engineering East building.

Assistant civil engineering professor Thomas Attard, Ph.D., is supervising graduate student Mike Wesson and senior Chris Abela, both civil engineering majors, in researching the effects of carbon wrapping on bridges during earthquakes.

The team thinks there̢۪s a need for their research because 25 percent of California̢۪s bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

“We’re doing a carbon wrap test to increase the strength capacity of bridges,â€Â Attard said.

Attard said that carbon wrap was chosen for the tests because it is very bendable and will bind well to the concrete. He described it as similar to a very strong form of Saran Wrap – about ten times as strong as steel.

“Imagine Saran Wrap made out of carbon, where you can just peel it and just wrap it around,â€Â he said. “What this does is it’s supposed to give like a giant bear hug to the columns … during shaking the concrete doesn’t have a chance to [break] off.â€Â

The project, funded by Fresno State and supported by Cal Trans, began this past February. Attard wrote computer programs that simulated earthquakes and how a bridge would respond. The team is currently testing to make sure that the shake table will be able to move the 18,000 pounds of concrete when the earthquake is applied to it.

Next January, the team will be using an earthquake modeled after the 1994 Northridge, Calif. earthquake – which caused $15 billion in damage and killed 57 people – to damage a replica of a Selma bridge at a 40 percent scale.

“We’ll create an artificial earthquake that, at least on our computers, has told us that it will damage this bridge,â€Â Attard said.

Students Wesson and Abela built all of the columns of the bridge for the three planned tests. Abela, 23, said the two have learned a lot about the construction process.

“You learn a lot in school that’s mainly theoretically-based, but then when you actually have to do it hands-on, then you start running into little problems,â€Â Abela said. “We’re getting better at it … but the initial part was just being new to the construction aspect of it.â€Â

If the first test successfully damages the bridge, the second test, called a pristine carbon test, will take place. The team will wrap carbon around the second bridge replica and use the same earthquake on it.

“We’re going to compare the advantages of carbon wrapping to non-carbon wrapping,â€Â Attard said.

Abela said that they will attempt to perform the second test until the carbon wrap fails so they can see the capacity of the carbon.

“You kind of want it to fail … You want to see how far it can go,â€Â Abela said. “The goal is we want [the carbon wrap] to resist an earthquake, but we also want to know its limitations.â€Â

In the final test, the damaged carbon test, the researchers will use an earthquake to cause minor damage to a bridge replica before wrapping it in carbon and testing the effects of a Northridge-like earthquake.

“It’s not realistic to think that an actual bridge out there is perfect,â€Â Attard said. “Can we now increase the strength of those somewhat deteriorated bridges by carbon wrapping?â€Â

Abela will continue working with the team as a graduate student in the spring. Eventually, they hope to use their findings to increase the safety of public bridges.

He said that the large size of the shaker table at Fresno State and the large scale of their bridge replica will be an advantage because the bigger the scale, the more seriously the research will be taken.

“Not a lot of schools have shake tables, so I thought this was a really good opportunity with a really good project that I didn’t want to pass up,â€Â Abela said.