That kind of weight puts shake tables under enormous stress, Mosqueda explains. It not only forces them to operate at full capacity, there is the additional potential for the heavy structure to crash down on the equipment.

'But in this case, we simulated the load with high-performance hydraulic actuators so the specimen overall was actually pretty light,' explains Mosqueda.

'We completely did away with the hazard of having tonnes of weight overhead that could come crashing down. Here, we just shut off the hydraulics and the load disappeared.'

It took the US and Japanese researchers, communicating over the net, about two hours to subject the hybrid model to the powerful ground motions that represented approximately the first five seconds of the 1995 Kobe quake, says an UB-release.

The hybrid test paves the way for additional experiments that will allow researchers to more precisely learn about the nature of structural collapse, says Mosqueda.