Controller development for the E-Defense shaking table

Abstract After the 1995 Kobe earthquake in Japan, the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED) constructed a new large-scale shaking table as a facility for three-dimensional earthquake damage testing, called E-Defense. The facility was completed in March 2005. E-Defense has the unique capacity to experiment with life-size buildings and infrastructural systems in real earthquake conditions, and is intended to be the ultimate verification tool. The current paper describes the specification of the facility, features of the control system, and some experimental results of the control performance tests. It also describes major ongoing projects at E-Defense.