PEER Reports

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...

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...

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...