PEER Reports

PEER Reports

Toward Resilient Communities: A Performance-Based Engineering Framework for Design and Evaluation of the Built Environment, PEER Report, PEER Report 2013-19

Michael William Mieler
Bozidar Stojadinovic
Robert J. Budnitz
Stephen A. Mahin
Mary C. Comerio
2013

A community is a dynamic system of people, organizations, and patterned relationships and interactions. Most of these relationships and interactions are physically supported by a community’s built environment, a complex and interdependent network of engineered subsystems and components, including buildings, bridges, pipelines, transmission towers, and other structures. As a result, the built environment plays a crucial role in enabling a community to function successfully, providing the foundations for much of the economic and social activities that characterize a modern society. Natural...

GEM-PEER Task 3 Project: Selection of a Global Set of Ground Motion Prediction Equations, PEER Report 2013-22

Jonathan P. Stewart
John Douglas
Mohammad B. Javanbarg
Carola Di Alessandro
Yousef Bozorgnia
Norman A. Abrahamson
David M. Boore
Kenneth W. Campbell
Elise Delavaud
Mustafa Erdik
Peter J. Stafford
2013

Ground-motion prediction equations (GMPEs) relate a ground-motion parameter (e.g., peak ground acceleration, PGA) to a set of explanatory variables describing the earthquake source, wave propagation path and local site conditions. In the past five decades many hundreds of GMPEs for the prediction of PGA and linear elastic response spectral ordinates (e.g., pseudo-spectral acceleration, PSA) have been published. The Global Earthquake Model (GEM) Global GMPEs project, coordinated by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER), brought together ground-motion experts from various...

Earthquake Engineering for Resilient Communities: 2013 PEER Internship Program Research Report Collection, PEER Report 2013-25

Heidi Tremayne
Stephen A. Mahin
Jorge Archbold Monterrosa
Matt Brosman
Shelley Dean
Katherine deLaveaga
Curtis Fong
Donovan Holder
Rakeeb Khan
Elizabeth R. Jachens
David Lam
Daniela Martinez Lopez
Mara Minner
Geffen Oren
Julia Pavicic
Melissa C. Quinonez
Lorena Rodriguez
Sean E. Salazar
Kelli Slaven
Vivian Steyert
Jenny Taing
Salvador Tena
2013

Recent earthquakes in the U.S. and around the world have repeatedly shown that earthquake resilience is essential to building and sustaining urban communities. Earthquake resilience will play an increasingly important role in the professions associated with earthquake hazard mitigation, thus there is a need to educate the next generation of these professionals. To address this need, the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) coordinates a summer internship program for undergraduate students that focuses on the theme of earthquake-resilient communities. With funding from the...

Theoretical Development of Hybrid Simulation Applied to Plate Structures, PEER Report 2014-02

Ahmed A. Bakhaty
Khalid M. Mosalam
Sanjay Govindjee
2014

Hybrid simulation is a popular testing method for the experimental assessment of structural systems. The primary notion is to test only part of the system physically while simultaneously simulating the rest of the system via computer. While the basic idea is simple to understand, there is surprisingly little theoretical work targeted towards understanding the behavior of the concept and in particular its theoretical limitations. Although much attention has been devoted to reducing perceived error, little is actually known about what the reduction targets should be. In this report an...

Performance-Based Seismic Assessment of Skewed Bridges, PEER Report 2014-01

Peyman Kaviani
Farzin Zareian
Ertugrul Taciroglu
2014

The objective of this study is to assess the seismic behavior of reinforced concrete bridges with skew-angled seat-type abutments through a performance-based methodology. Special attention is given to the exploration of variations in the seismic behavior of such bridges with respect to the angle of skew. Post-earthquake reconnaissance studies have reported that larger values of skew angle adversely affect performance. The idiosyncratic, “multi-phasic,” behavior of skew bridges—observed during initial simulations of the present study—led to the development of a novel assessment methodology...

Seismic Velocity Site Characterization of Thirty-One Chilean Seismometer Stations by Spectral Analysis of Surface Wave Dispersion, PEER Report 2014-05

Robert Kayen
Brad D. Carkin
Skye Corbet
Camilo Pinilla
Allan Ng
Edward Gorbis
Christine Truong
2014

We present one-dimensional shear-wave velocity (VS) profiles at 31 strong-motion sites in Chile, from Valdivia in southern Chile to Copiapo in the northern Atacama Desert. We estimate the VS profiles with the spectral analysis of surface waves (SASW) method. The SASW method is a non-invasive method that is useful for indirect estimate of the VS at depth from variations in the Rayleigh wave phase velocity at the surface. The purpose of the study is to determine the detailed site velocity profile, the average velocity in the upper 30 m of the profile V...

Northridge 20 Symposium Summary Report, PEER Report 2014-07

H. Tremayne
S. A. Mahin
J. Maffei
D. McCarthy
J. Bwarie
2014

On the 20th anniversary of the Northridge earthquake, more than 600 people gathered in Los Angeles to share the impacts of the 1994 earthquake, highlight accomplishments of the past two decades, and identify necessary steps forward to make our communities more resilient to future earthquakes. This event, called the Northridge 20 Symposium, drew participants from a broad range of disciplines, including earth scientists, structural engineers, risk modelers, emergency managers, and public officials. This summary report presents the findings and recommendations for each of the 11 key areas...

Unbonded Pretensioned Bridge Columns with Rocking Detail, PEER Report 2014-08

Jeffrey A. Schaefer
Bryan Kennedy
Marc O. Eberhard
John F. Stanton
2014

The columns and cap-beams of most bridges are built of cast-in-place reinforced concrete (CIP). The construction of CIP bridges often causes traffic congestion, and following an earthquake, they may be too damaged to function. To address these concerns, the authors have developed a new precast, pretensioned system. The precast feature reduces traffic delays by moving time- consuming construction activities off site. The pretensioning feature tends to reduce residual displacements after an earthquake. To minimize damage, deformations are concentrated at the columns ends, where a steel shoe...

PEER Arizona Strong-Motion Database and GMPEs Evaluation, PEER Report 2014-09

Tadahiro Kishida
Robert E. Kayen
Olga-Joan Ktenidou
Walter J. Silva
Robert B. Darragh
Jennie Watson-Lamprey
2014

This report summarizes the products and results of a study on the collection, processing, and analysis of earthquake ground-motions recorded in Arizona at several recording stations within 200 km from the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in central Arizona. The recorded ground motion in Arizona were compiled and processed according to the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center’s (PEER) record-processing standards. Shear-wave velocity profiles at ten recording stations were measured through the spectral analysis of surface wave dispersion technique. Additionally, “kappa” a...

Evaluation of Collapse and Non-Collapse of Parallel Bridges Affected by Liquefaction and Lateral Spreading, PEER Report 2014-10

Benjamin Turner
Scott J. Brandenberg
Jonathan P. Stewart
2014

The Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center and the California Department of Transportation have recently developed design guidelines for computing foundation demands during lateral spreading using equivalent static analysis (ESA) procedures. In this study, ESA procedures are applied to two parallel bridges that were damaged during the 2010 M 7.2 El Mayor-Cucapah earthquake in Baja California, Mexico. The bridges are both located approximately 15 km from the surface rupture of the fault on soft alluvial soil site conditions. Estimated median ground motions in the area in the absence...