PEER Reports

PEER Reports

A Granular Framework for Modeling the Capacity Loss and Recovery of Regional Transportation Networks under Seismic Hazards: A Case Study on the Port of Los Angeles, PEER Report 2024-05

Michael Benedict Virtucio
Barbaros Cetiner
Bingyu Zhao
Kenichi Soga
Ertugrul Taciroglu
2024

Earthquakes, being both unpredictable and potentially destructive, pose great risks to critical infrastructure systems like transportation. It becomes crucial, therefore, to have both a fine-grained and holistic understanding of how the current state of a transportation system would fare during hypothetical hazard scenarios. This paper introduces a synthesis approach to assessing the impacts of earthquakes by coupling an image-based structure-and-site-specific bridge fragility generation methodology with regional-scale traffic simulations and economic loss prediction models. The proposed...

PEER Report 2024/05: "A Granular Framework for Modeling the Capacity Loss and Recovery of Regional Transportation Networks under Seismic Hazards: A Case Study on the Port of Los Angeles"

June 13, 2024

PEER has published Report No. 2024/05: "A Granular Framework for Modeling the Capacity Loss and Recovery of Regional Transportation Networks under Seismic Hazards: A Case Study on the Port of Los Angeles." It was authored by Michael Benedict Virtucio, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley; Barbaros Cetiner, NHERI SimCenter; Bingyu Zhao, University of California, Berkeley; Kenichi Soga, TU Wien, Austria; Ertugrul Taciroglu, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering University of California, Los Angeles.

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Two-Dimensional Debris-Fluid-Structure Interaction with the Particle Finite Element Method, PEER Report 2024-04

Minjie Zhu
Michael H. Scott
2024

In addition to tsunami wave loading, tsunami-driven debris can cause significant damage to coastal infrastructure and critical bridge lifelines. Using numerical simulations to predict loads imparted by debris on structures is necessary to supplement the limited number of physical experiments of in-water debris loading. To supplement SPH-FEM (Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics-Finite Element Method) simulations described in a companion PEER report, fluid-structure-debris simulations using the Particle Finite Element Method (PFEM) show the debris modeling capabilities in OpenSees. A new contact...

An International Workshop on Large-Scale Shake Table Testing for the Assessment of Soil-Foundation-Structure System Response for Seismic Safety of DOE Nuclear Facilities, A Virtual Workshop – 17-18 May 2021, PEER Report 2024-03

Ramin Motamed
David McCallen
Swasti Saxena
2024

Aging infrastructure within the US Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) nuclear facilities poses a major challenge to their resiliency against natural phenomenon hazards. Examples of mission-critical facilities located in regions of high seismicity can be found at a number of NNSA sites including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Nevada National Security Site. Most of the nation’s currently operating nuclear facilities have already reached their operating lifetime, and most currently operating...

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...

Expert Panel Recommendations for Ergodic Site Amplification in Central and Eastern North America, PEER Report 2017-04

Jonathan P. Stewart
Grace A. Parker
Joseph P. Harmon
Gail M. Atkinson
David M. Boore
Robert B. Darragh
Walter J. Silva
Youssef M.A. Hashash
2017

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) national seismic hazard maps have historically been produced for a reference site condition of VS30 = 760 m/sec (where VS30 is time averaged shear wave velocity in the upper 30 m of the site). The resulting ground motions are modified for five site classes (A-E) using site amplification factors for peak acceleration and ranges of short- and long-oscillator periods. As a result of Project 17 recommendations, this practice is being revised: (1) maps will be produced for a range of site conditions (as represented by V...

Response Modification of Structures with Supplemental Rotational Inertia, PEER Report 2024-01

Gholamreza Moghimi
Nicos Makris
2024

Tall, multistory, buildings are becoming increasingly popular in large cities as a result of growing
urbanization trends (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2018). As cities
continue to grow, many of them along the coasts of continents which are prone to natural hazards,
the performance of tall, flexible buildings when subjected to natural hazards is a pressing issue
with engineering relevance. The performance of structures when subjected to dynamic loads can
be enhanced with various response modification strategies which have been traditionally...

NGA-East Ground-Motion Models for the U.S. Geological Survey National Seismic Hazard Maps, PEER Report 2017-03

Christine A. Goulet
Yousef Bozorgnia
Nicolas Kuehn
Linda Al Atik
Robert R. Youngs
Robert W. Graves
Gail M. Atkinson
2017

The purpose of this report is to provide a set of ground motion models (GMMs) to be considered by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) for their National Seismic Hazard Maps (NSHMs) for the Central and Eastern U.S. (CEUS). These interim GMMs are adjusted and modified from a set of preliminary models developed as part of the Next Generation Attenuation for Central and Eastern North-America (CENA) project (NGA-East). The NGA-East objective was to develop a new ground-motion characterization (GMC) model for the CENA region. The GMC model consists of a set of GMMs for median and standard...

U.S.—New Zealand— Japan International Workshop, Liquefaction-Induced Ground Movement Effects, University of California, Berkeley, California, 2-4 November 2016, PEER Report 2017-02

Jonathan D. Bray
Ross W. Boulanger
Misko Cubrinovski
Kohji Tokimatsu
Steven L. Kramer
Thomas O’Rourke
Ellen Rathje
Russell A. Green
Peter K. Robertson
Christine Z. Beyzaei
2017

There is much to learn from the recent New Zealand and Japan earthquakes. These earthquakes produced differing levels of liquefaction-induced ground movements that damaged buildings, bridges, and buried utilities. Along with the often spectacular observations of infrastructure damage, there were many cases where well-built facilities located in areas of liquefaction-induced ground failure were not damaged. Researchers are working on characterizing and learning from these observations of both poor and good performance.

The “Liquefaction-Induced Ground Movements Effects” workshop...

PEER Annual Report 2016, PEER Report 2017-01

Khalid Mosalam
Amarnath Kasalanati
Grace Kang
2017

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 develop, validate, and disseminate performance-based seismic design technologies for buildings and infrastructure to meet the diverse economic and safety needs of owners and society.

The year 2016 began with a change of leadership at PEER. On January 1, Professor Khalid Mosalam became the new PEER Director as Professor Stephen Mahin completed his 6- year term. Also in early 2016, Dr. Yousef...