The impact of a PEER funded research project "New Near-Fault Adjustment Factors for Caltrans Seismic Design Criteria (SDC)" is highlighted below. The project Principal Investigator (PI) is Yousef Bozorgnia, University of California, Los Angeles. The Research Team includes Silvia Mazzoni and Esra Zengin, UCLA; Mahdi Bahrampouri, PG&E.
Download the Research Project Summary which includes the abstract (PDF)
Abstract
Recordings from past earthquakes reveal that ground shaking at locations near a rupturing fault can be substantially more damaging than from further distances. Since 1992 Caltrans has increased the design response spectrum at locations less than 15 km from a fault to account for the potential severity of shaking. These near-fault increases to the design spectrum, achieved using period dependent adjustment factors, have only received minor modification since their inception. This project aimed to update the near-fault adjustment factors to incorporate recent findings from a statewide seismic hazard model that includes near-fault effects and from a recent study on the inelastic structural response resulting from near-fault input motion. Updated near-fault adjustment factors will be used in bridge design.
