The Irwin and Joan Jacobs School of Engineering's Department of Structural Engineering is using cutting-edge technology to improve the safety of the nationís buildings, bridges, and highways.

In collaboration with the Caltech-CUREe Woodframe Project, an initiative to reduce damage to residential buildings during earthquakes, UC San Diego engineers completed the first fully dynamic earthquake test ever performed on a full-scale building in the United States. A two-story woodframe house rigged with 300 sensors and six cameras was shaken with the force of a magnitude 6.7 earthquake at the Powell Structural Research Laboratory on campus. Such tests will lead to improved building codes.

In partnership with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Caltrans, UC San Diego structural engineers have designed a 450-foot long, cable-stayed, four-lane Advanced Technology Bridge (ATB) that combines composite materials developed for the defense industry with conventional materials from the civil sector. Consisting of carbon or glass fibers embedded in a polymeric matrix, these extremely strong composites resist fatigue and corrosion, are cheaper, faster to work with, and last longer. The ATB will cross Interstate 5, connecting the east and west campuses of the university.

A similar bridge, unique in that it will be almost entirely composed of glass and carbon composites, will be built on State Route 86 near the Salton Sea, east of San Diego. It will be the only all-composite bridge in California and the only one in the world to carry heavy traffic.

According to Frieder Seible, the project's designer and chair of the school's Department of Structural Engineering, "This project could open the door for a complete rethinking of what engineers consider as structural materials for buildings and bridges."