PEER Reports

PEER Reports

Case Studies of the Seismic Performance of Tall Buildings Designed by Alternative Means, PEER Report 2011-05

Jack Moehle
Yousef Bozorgnia
Nirmal Jayaram
Pierson Jones
Mohsen Rahnama
Nilesh Shome
Zeynep Tuna
John Wallace
Tony Yang
Farzin Zareian
2011

This report was completed to fulfill the final reporting requirements to the California Seismic Safety Commission under Contract No. SSC-2007-16 and California Emergency Management Agency under Contract No. FEMA-1628-DR-CA, OES-0005. These contracts provided financial support to conduct tall buildings case studies for testing the Performance-Based Seismic Design Guidelines for Tall Buildings developed under the Tall Buildings Initiative of the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley. In addition to California Seismic Safety...

Urban Earthquake Engineering, PEER Report 2013-26

Proceedings of the U.S.-Iran Seismic Workshop
2013

The 4th U.S.-Iran Seismic Workshop was held on December 18-20, 2012 in Tehran, Iran. The workshop was supported by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in collaboration with the Sharif University of Technology, Iran, and the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, USA. The theme of the workshop was Urban Earthquake Engineering. This report contains the collection of papers presented at the 2012 seismic workshop.

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Structural Response and Cost Characterization of Bridge Construction Using Seismic Performance Enhancement Strategies, PEER Report 2010-01

Ady Aviram
Bozidar Stojadinovic
Gustavo J. Parra-Montesinos
Kevin R. Mackie
2010

The improved seismic performance and cost-effectiveness of two innovative performance enhancement technologies in typical reinforced concrete bridge construction in California were assessed in analytical and experimental studies. The technologies considered were lead rubber bearing isolators underneath the superstructure and fiber-reinforced concrete for the construction of bridge columns.

Pushover and time history analyses were carried out for the different bridge systems. The analytical model of the fiber-reinforced concrete bridge was calibrated based on bidirectional cyclic...

Shear Wave Velocity as a Statistical Function of Standard Penetration Test Resistance and Vertical Effective Stress at Caltrans Bridge Sites, PEER Report 2010-03

Scott J. Brandenberg
Naresh Bellana
Thomas Shantz
2010

Shear wave velocity, Vs, is defined as a statistical function of SPT blow count, N60, and vertical effective stress, σv', using a data set collected at various California bridge sites. At each site, Vs measurements were recorded by suspension logging in the same borehole in which N60 was measured. Regression analysis was used to derive statistical relations for sand, silt, and clay soil types. The relation between Vs and N60 is shown to depend strongly on σv', since Vs and N60 normalize differently with...

In-Situ Monitoring of the Force Output of Fluid Dampers: Experimental Investigation, PEER Report 2011-103

Dimitrios Konstantinidis
James M. Kelly
Nicos Makris
2011

An alarming problem of leaking dampers has emerged in recent years in some California bridges, such as the west span of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and the Vincent Thomas Bridge crossing the Los Angeles Harbor. This reports presents the results of an experimental testing program that was undertaken to develop and validate a simple and reliable way to monitor the force output of viscous fluid dampers in bridges.

The research includes indoor and outdoor experiments on two medium-size (250 kips at 42 in/sec piston velocity, ±8.0 in. stroke capacity) and two...

Design and Instrumentation of the 2010 E-Defense Four-Story Reinforced Concrete and Post-Tensioned Concrete Buildings, PEER Report 2011-104

Takuya Nagae
Kenichi Tahara
Taizo Matsumori
Hitoshi Shiohara
Susumu Kono
Minehiro Nishiyama
John Wallace
Wassim Ghannoum
Jack Moehle
Richard Sause
Wesley Keller
Zeynep Tuna
2011

This study reports on a collaborative research on the design, instrumentation, and preliminary analytical studies of two, full-scale, four-story buildings tested simultaneously on the NIED E-Defense shake table in December 2010. The two buildings are similar, with the same height and floor plan; one building utilized a conventional reinforced concrete (RC) structural system with shear walls and moment frames, whereas the other utilized the same systems constructed with post-tensioned (PT) members. The buildings were subjected to increasing intensity shaking using the JMA-Kobe record until...

Self Compacting Hybrid Fiber Reinforced Concrete Composites for Bridge Columns, PEER Report 2011-106

Pardeep Kumar
Gabriel Jen
William Trono
Marios Panagiotou
Claudia P. Ostertag
2011

Although fiber-reinforced composites have the potential to enhance the seismic performance of bridge columns, their use has been hampered by their poor workability and inadequate compaction for cast-in-place applications. To address this issue, this study developed a self-compacting hybrid fiber reinforced concrete (SC- HyFRC) composite. Optimized specifically for bridge columns, this composite flows under its own weight, completely filling the formwork and achieving full compaction without internal or external vibration. In addition, this SC-HyFRC provides enhanced ductility, shear...

Nonlinear Site Response and Seismic Compression at Vertical Array Strongly Shaken by 2007 Niigata-ken Chuetsu-oki Earthquake, PEER Report 2011-107

Eric Yee
Jonathan P. Stewart
Kohji Tokimatsu
2011

Strong ground motions from the Mw 6.6 2007 Niigata-ken Chuetsu-oki earthquake were recorded by a free-field downhole array installed near the Service Hall at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant. Site conditions at the array consist of about 70 m of medium-dense sands overlying clayey bedrock, with ground water located at 45 m. Ground shaking at the bedrock level had geometric mean peak accelerations of 0.55 g, which reduced to 0.4 g at the ground surface, indicating nonlinear site response. Ground settlements of approximately 15±5 cm occurred at the site. A site...

A Bayesian Network Methodology for Infrastructure Seismic Risk Assessment and Decision Support, PEER Report 2011-02

Michelle T. Bensi
Armen Der Kiureghian
Daniel Straub
2011

A Bayesian Network (BN) methodology is developed for performing infrastructure seismic risk assessment and providing decision support with an emphasis on immediate post-earthquake applications. A BN is a probabilistic graphical model that represents a set of random variables and their probabilistic dependencies. The variables may represent demand or capacity values, or the states of components and systems. Decision and utility nodes may be added that encode various decision alternatives and associated costs, thus facilitating support for decision-making under uncertainty.

BNs have...

New Ground Motion Selection Procedures and Selected Motions for the PEER Transportation Research Program, PEER Report 2011-03

Jack W. Baker
Ting Lin
Shrey K. Shahi
Nirmal Jayaram
2011

The primary goal of this project was to develop strategies for selecting standardized sets of ground motions for use by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center’s Transportation Research Program. The broad research activities of the Transportation Research Program require ground motions for use in a variety of applications, including analysis of structural and geotechnical systems at locations throughout California (or other active areas where seismic hazard is dominated by mid- to large-magnitude crustal earthquakes at near to moderate distances). The systems of interest may be...