Graduate Research Assistant Field Mission 2005
Mid-America Earthquake Center students Jong-Wha Bai, Nick Burdette, Lourdes Amelia Mieses, Bryant Nielson, Jamie Padgett, and Liora Sahar spent an exciting week in July learning about Greece and the Earthquake Engineering work happening in that country. The 2005 Tri-Center field mission to Greece took place July 5-13 and was organized and led by Sandra Menke and Reggie DesRoches of the MAE Center. While in Greece students met with researchers at the University of Patras and the National Technical University in Athens.
Students from the other NSF Earthquake Centers, PEER and MCEER, met MAE Center students in Athens the first night in Greece for dinner and an introduction to the week. The group traveled to Patras on the north-west coast of the Peloponese Peninsula the following morning for a detailed tour of the newly constructed Rion-Antirion Bridge. Aris Stathopoulos of the bridge’s design firm gave a tour that highlighted many of the innovative seismic systems used in the structure. The bridge has the largest pier foundations in the world, designed to reduce pressure on the weak soil and provide stability in an earthquake. The deck contains expansion joints capable of moving a full 5 meters during an earthquake and is attached to the piers with large dampers to absorb energy and reduce deck movement in a seismic event.
After touring the bridge, the group met researchers at the University of Patras to learn about their ongoing pseudo-dynamic testing. Professors Michael N. Fardis, Stavros A. Anagnostopoulos, and Nicos Makris led a tour of the civil engineering lab and gave presentations on their extensive research interests, including analytical modeling of ancient stone temple columns still standing in Greece today. After hearing about the innovative research being conducted at the University, the tour turned south to the inland of the Peloponese. Ancient Olympia was the next stop, where students learned the incredible history of the Ancient Olympics; these took place without interruption every four years for 1,170 years (776 B.C. – 394 A.D.). The ruins of the enormous Olympic complex demonstrated the importance of this site in antiquity.
The third night of the filed mission was spent in the beautiful harbor town of Nafplio. An imposing fortress used by the Turks in the 14th Century overlooks the entire city, and its 999 steps lured a small group of students out of bed early the next morning for an awe-inspiring sunrise view of the town from above. The remainder of the day was spent at several ancient sites on the Peloponnese, including Mycenee where the legendary Agamemnon of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey is said to have ruled. There students were shown ancient “beehive” tombs built of huge stones, with a 120 ton lintel over the doorway. The incredible engineering feat of constructing these tombs was not lost on the students. The ancient Greeks thought the tombs were most certainly built by giant Cyclops and not men, hence the term Cyclopean masonry is used to describe this style of construction. After stopping at a seismically retrofitted bridge that spanned the Corinth Canal, the field mission group returned to Athens for the remainder of their time in Greece.
The first full day in Athens was spent drinking in the famous historic and modern sites, including the Acropolis and Parthenon, the first modern Olympic stadium, the President’s guarded house, and the National Archeological Museum of Athens. The collections at the National Museum are representative of all the cultures that have flourished in Greece, and include a 2,100 year old astronomical instrument known as the Mechanism of Antikythira. Prof. Michael Constantinou from the University of Buffalo explained that the Mechanism was found in 1901 by sponge divers in a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythira. The device is a small metal box with over 20 tiny gears which archeologists think was used to show the location of all the known planets and the sun at any time. It was made in the first century B.C. and is unlike anything known to exist at that time. Mechanical complexity of its level was not thought to exist before the Renaissance in Europe, and the Mechanism shows another way in which ancient Greek civilization continues to amaze modern scholars.
The following day was spent at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and the modern Olympic Stadium. At the University of Athens, Professor J. Psycharis, Professor Constantine Spyrakos, and Yannis Sigalas gave presentations on the core research of the shake table facility. Students were shown video of tests performed on multi-story masonry structures, both before and after retrofit, with the goal of identifying inexpensive and effective retrofit strategies. Shake table tests of stone columns similar to the Parthenon were also performed without collapse. Later that day at the modern Olympic Stadium, students were able to photograph Santiago Calatrava’s magnificent suspended stadium roof and modern agora structures of the Olympic complex.
Before leaving Athens for the US on Wednesday the 13th, the field mission participants took a one-day cruise in the Aegean Sea to the islands of Poros, Hydra, and Aegina. Greece has over 2,000 islands in the Aegean, Ionian, and Mediterranean Seas, though most are not inhabited. The island tour gave students a taste of the beauty and diversity of the Greek islands, and the life of rural island villagers. When the field mission team departed for home the next day, everyone left with deep appreciation for Greece: its history, beauty, and technological contributions to the world.
