PEER Research Project Highlight: "A Comprehensive Database of RC Column Tests"

July 23, 2020

The impact of a PEER funded research project "A Comprehensive Database of RC Column Tests" is highlighted below. The project Principal Investigator (PI) is John W. Wallace, Professor, UCLA, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. The research team includes Saman Abdullah, Postdoctoral Researcher, UCLA.

Download the Research Project Highlight which includes the abstract (PDF)

Research Impact:

  1. Reevaluate Caltrans Seismic Design Criteria to improve design provisions (e.g., lateral stiffness and shear strength, as well as statistical information) of bridge columns for new and existing construction.
  2. Provide experimental data on retrofitted and repaired columns that could be used to develop updated design provisions and modeling parameters.
  3. Assess the newly introduced one-way and two-way column shear strength equations in ACI 318-19 and address potential issues associated with seismic design.
  4. The expanded database should also provide data for extending and validating existing fiber-based modeling approaches implemented in OpenSees for coupled axial-bending (P-M) and shear (V) responses of RC columns.
  5. Provide the structural/earthquake engineering community with a comprehensive column database. It is expected that the new database would be widely used by both researchers and practitioners.