Establishment of Shock Table Testing Facility at IOE Pulchowk for Earthquake-Resilient Building Research in Nepal

Overview

Mahavir Shree International Pvt. Ltd. supplied and delivered specialized measurement equipment for a Shock Table testing facility at the Institute of Engineering (IoE), Pulchowk, Lalitpur, Nepal, under reference MSI-PRJ-76-2152. The project was led by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and was completed in June 2021 over a six-month duration.

The facility was established as Nepal's first research center dedicated to assessing the seismic performance of building materials, built to simulate the 1.6 g acceleration conditions recorded during the 2015 Nepal earthquake and to support evaluation of structural response and development of retrofitting techniques.

Scope & Deliverables

• Sensing hardware: KS48C accelerometers, Multisense linear potentiometers, and ASM linear displacement transducers.
• Data acquisition: Dewetron Trionet modules with OXYGEN software.
• Recording systems: Hioki Memory HiLoggers for data capture.
• Shock Table configured to replicate the 1.6 g acceleration conditions of the 2015 Nepal earthquake, for evaluating how structures withstand earthquake forces and testing construction and reinforcement techniques.

Outcome

The sensing, data acquisition, and recording equipment was commissioned and handed over to IoE Pulchowk, producing experimental values for acceleration and displacement that matched theoretical design predictions. The Shock Table facility now provides engineers with structural response data to inform the design of earthquake-resistant buildings and retrofitting measures in Nepal.