PEER Reports

PEER Reports

Ground Improvement-Based Protection of Transportation Infrastructure: Validation of Performance Based Engineering via Centrifuge Shake Table Testing, PEER Report 2025-03

Jeffrey T. Newgard
Tara C. Hutchinson
John S. McCartney
2025

This report presents a centrifuge modeling investigation into the performance of rocking footings supported by various ground improvement strategies with the aim of controlling their performance during earthquake shaking. The rocking footings investigated in this study are modeled after the shallow foundations supporting a two-span highway bridge at the crossing of Hwy 108 and Sanguinetti Road in Sonora, California, which also served as the archetype bridge in previous centrifuge studies on rocking footings. These earlier studies confirmed that under-designed foundations re-center reliably...

Towards Deep Learning-Based Structural Response Prediction and Ground Motion Reconstruction, PEER Report 2025-01

Khalid M. Mosalam
Issac K.T. Pang
Selim Günay
2025

This research presents a novel methodology that uses Temporal Convolutional Networks (TCNs), a state-of-the-art deep learning architecture, for predicting the time history of structural responses to seismic events. By leveraging accelerometer data from instrumented buildings, the proposed approach complements traditional structural analysis models, offering a computationally efficient alternative to nonlinear time history analysis. The methodology is validated across a broad spectrum of structural scenarios, including buildings with pronounced higher-mode effects and those exhibiting both...

New PEER Publication 2019/05: "Expected Earthquake Performance of Buildings Designed to the California Building Code"

July 30, 2019
PEER has just issued Publication No. 2019/05 titled “Expected Earthquake Performance of Buildings Designed to the California Building Code.”

Influence of Vertical Ground Motion on Bridges Isolated with Spherical Sliding Bearings, PEER Report 2019-08

Rushil Mojidra
Keri L. Ryan
2019

The motivation for this project developed from testing of a full scale building isolated with triple friction pendulum bearings on the E-defense shake table in Japan. The test demonstrated experimentally that the vertical component of ground motion can amplify both the base shear and the story acceleration in the isolated building. Vertical shaking introduced high-frequency variation in the axial force of the bearings, and, consequently, a high-frequency component in the bearing lateral force, which excited higher structural modes in the building. Since vertical bridges are flexible in the...

Seismic Behavior of Special Concentric Braced Frames under Short- and Long-Duration Ground Motions, PEER Report 2019-09

Ali Hammad
Mohamed A. Moustafa
2019

Over the past decade, several long-duration subduction earthquakes took place in different locations around the world, e.g., Chile in 2010, Japan in 2011, China in 2008, and Indonesia in 2004. Recent research has revealed that long-duration, large-magnitude earthquakes may occur along the Cascadia subduction zone of the Pacific Northwest Coast of the U.S. The duration of an earthquake often affects the response of structures. Current seismic design specifications mostly use response spectra to identify the hazard and do not consider duration effects. Thus, a comprehensive understanding of...

PEER Activities 2018—2020, PEER Report 2020/08

Khalid Mosalam
Amarnath Kasalanati
2020

The Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) is a multi-institutional research and education center with headquarters at the University of California, Berkeley. PEER’s mission is to (1) develop, validate, and disseminate performance-based engineering (PBE) technologies for buildings and infrastructure networks subjected to earthquakes and other natural hazards, with the goal of achieving community resilience; and (2) equip the earthquake engineering and other extreme-event communities with new tools. This report presents the activities of the Center over the period of July 1,...

Seismic Performance of Isolated Bridges Under Beyond Design Basis Shaking, PEER Report 2024-02

Claudio Sepulveda
Ricardo Bustamante
Gilberto Mosqueda
2024

Seismically isolated highway bridges are expected to provide limited service under a safety evaluation-level ground shaking with minimal to moderate damage. The behavior under shaking beyond design considerations, corresponding to a large return period seismic hazard, is not well understood and could induce significant damage. In these rare events, the seismic isolation system can be subjected to displacement demands beyond its design capacity, resulting in failure of the bearings, exceeding the clearance and pounding against the abutment backwalls, or damage propagating to other primary...

Evaluation and Calibration of an OpenSees Layered Shell Element Model for Simulating the Earthquake Response of Flexure-Controlled Reinforced Concrete Walls, PEER Report 2024-11

Joshua Stokley
Laura N. Lowes
2024

Reinforced concrete walls are used commonly to resist lateral loads; often, concrete walls have
three-dimensional configurations to maximize stiffness and strength. Seismic design, evaluation,
and retrofit of concrete wall structures often requires nonlinear analysis to predict performance,
and assessment of earthquake risk for regions and individual structures often requires nonlinear
analysis to predict damage, loss of functionality, and repair time and cost. This report presents the
results of a research study in which high-performance cloud-computing resources were used...

PEER Report 2024/11: "Evaluation and Calibration of an OpenSees Layered Shell Element Model for Simulating the Earthquake Response of Flexure-Controlled Reinforced Concrete Walls"

July 10, 2025

PEER has published Report No. 2024/11: "Evaluation and Calibration of an OpenSees Layered Shell Element Model for Simulating the Earthquake Response of Flexure-Controlled Reinforced Concrete Walls." It was authored by Joshua Stokley, Boeing Corporation and Laura Lowes, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering University of Washington, Seattle, WA.

Access the report and 2 page summary. Access the full listing of PEER reports....

California Earthquake Early Warning System Benefit Study, PEER Report 2016-06

Laurie A. Johnson
Sharyl Rabinovici
Grace S. Kang
Stephen A. Mahin
2016

The magnitude 6.0 South Napa Earthquake of August 24, 2014, took the lives of two people, injured 300 others, and caused moderate to severe damage to more than 2,000 structures. It is one of the first damaging earthquakes to strike a major metropolitan area in the State of California in over two decades. During that time period, California’s population has grown by over 25%, the state’s economy has tripled, and a great many of the state’s new residents and businesses have never experienced a major earthquake. It is almost guaranteed that there will be a major damaging earthquake somewhere...