Recent shake-table tests on a wood-framed house—equipped with newly developed low-cost seismic base isolators—confirmed predictions that the two-story house would come through structurally unscathed. The goal of the research, considered an important step toward more earthquake-resilient single-family housing, is to "dramatically improve" the seismic performance of light-frame residential construction, without making the houses uneconomical.
"Seismic isolation is not a new concept, but it has been cost-prohibitive for houses," says Gregory Deierlein, a professor of civil engineering at Stanford University and one of three principal investigators in the three-year research program on earthquake-resilient housing. "The key is to make it inexpensive," says Deierlein, whose co-principal investigators are Stanford engineering professor Eduardo Miranda and California State University, Sacramento, professor Benjamin Fell.