HOUSTON -- With all the rain the Houston area has received lately, it's hard to imagine some residents thinking about earthquakes. But a University of Houston professor always has tremors and quakes on his mind, KPRC Local 2, Your Education Station, reported Monday.

Dr. Thomas Hsu is at the epicenter of earthquake concrete research with a 15-foot tall, 40-ton, $1 million concrete cracker known as the universal element tester. The UET contains more than a mile of pipes to transport oil pressure to 40 jacks. Each jack is capable of applying 100 tons of force.

"This type of research benefits the world -- Texas, the U.S., the whole world," Hsu said.

Hsu, Dr. Yi-Lung Mo and selected students test panels that would be used for bridges, buildings or even a nuclear reactor shell.

"You know how much strength the material has and what it can withstand. It deforms and goes back into place or fails," said Rachel Howser, a National Science Foundation scholar.

Howser is one of 10 students from other universities spending the summer at UH.

Their experiments test tiny steel fibers in the concrete, which is poured from scratch.

The Texas Department of Transportation funded one of the projects that tests bridges.

Mo helped rebuild Taiwan after a powerful earthquake in 1999.

"This is what we want in design -- to save people's lives," Mo said.

Fibers in the concrete absorb energy from a quake, explosion or hurricane.

The technology is already in bridges across Texas.

Hsu recently was honored with the Arthur J. Boase Award from the American Concrete Institute for his work in the field of reinforced concrete research.

More Information

University of Houston: Dr. Thomas Hsu
Thomas T.C. Hsu Structural Research Laboratory