PEER Reports

PEER Reports

Further Studies on Seismic Interaction in Interconnected Electrical Substation Equipment, PEER Report 2000-01

Armen Der Kiureghian
Kee-Jeung Hong
Jerome L. Sackman
2000

In a previous study, we investigated the effect of interaction between interconnected electrical substation equipment subjected to ground motions. Each equipment item was modeled as a system with distributed mass and stiffness properties and, through the use of a displacement shape function, was characterized by a single degree of freedom. Two kinds of connecting elements were considered: One was a linear spring-dashpot-mass element, representing a rigid bus conductor, and another was an extensible cable, representing a flexible conductor, in which the flexural rigidity and inertia effects...

Framing Earthquake Retrofitting Decisions: The Case of Hillside Homes in Los Angeles, PEER Report 2000-03

Detlof von Winterfeldt
Nels Roselund
Alicia Kitsuse
2000

The Northridge earthquake of 1994 created a surprising amount of damage to homes located on the hillsides of Los Angeles. Of approximately 10,000 hillside homes, 374 were damaged, some severely. This report examines three different representations, or “decision frames,” of the decision to improve the earthquake safety of hillside homes. The first decision frame is that of a safety engineer in a regulatory agency concerned with developing a city ordinance to reduce the future earthquake damage to hillside homes. The second decision frame is that of an individual homeowner, contemplating the...

An Evaluation of Seismic Energy Demand: An Attenuation Approach, PEER Report 2000-04

Chung-Che Chou
Chia-Ming Uang
2000

As a first step for the development of an energy-based procedure for seismic design and verification, establishing seismic demand in the form of absorbed energy spectra for an inelastic single- degree-of-freedom system was the main objective of this research. The absorbed energy ( Ea), not the input energy or hysteresis energy, was selected as the key demand parameter because it is not only related to the yield strength but also directly attributed to the damage of the structure.

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Performance-Based Evaluation of Exterior Reinforced Concrete Building Joints for Seismic Excitation, PEER Report 2000-05

Chandra Clyde
Chris P. Pantelides
Lawrence D. Reaveley
2000

Reinforced concrete (RC) buildings that were built in the 1960s behave in a nonductile manner and do not meet current seismic design criteria. In this report, beam-column joints of such nonductile buildings are investigated using several performance-based criteria. Four half-scale RC exterior joints were tested to investigate their behavior in a shear-critical mode. The joints were subjected to quasi-static cyclic loading, and their performance was examined in terms of lateral load capacity, drift, axial load reduction in the column at high levels of drift, joint shear strength, ductility...

Seismic Evaluation and Analysis of 230-kV Disconnect Switches, PEER Report 2000-06

Amir S. J. Gilani
Andrew S. Whittaker
Gregory L. Fenves
Chun-Hao Chen
Henry Ho
Eric Fujisak
Pacific Gas & Electric Company
2000

Five 230-kV disconnect switches were selected for testing and evaluation. Switches of this rating were known to be vulnerable to the effects of earthquake shaking. The class of the switches selected included two horizontal-break and three vertical-break switches. Switches with both porcelain and composite polymer insulators, and switches with both cast aluminum and welded steel base hardware were tested. First, an individual pole (out of three) of each switch was mounted directly on the simulator platform. Static and resonance search tests were conducted to determine the dynamic properties...

Cover-Plate and Flange-Plate Reinforced Steel Moment-Resisting Connections, PEER Report 2000-07

Taejin Kim
Andrew S. Whittaker
Amir S. J. Gilani
Vitelmo V. Bertero
Shakhzod M. Takhirov
2000

Five 230-kV disconnect switches were selected for testing and evaluation. Switches of this rating were known to be vulnerable to the effects of earthquake shaking. The class of the switches selected included two horizontal-break and three vertical-break switches. Switches with both porcelain and composite polymer insulators, and switches with both cast aluminum and welded steel base hardware were tested. First, an individual pole (out of three) of each switch was mounted directly on the simulator platform. Static and resonance search tests were conducted to determine the dynamic properties...

Behavior of Reinforced Concrete Bridge Columns Having Varying Aspect Ratios and Varying Lengths of Confinement, PEER Report 2000-08

Anthony J. Calderone
Dawn E. Lehman
Jack P. Moehle
2000

Experience and research on reinforced concrete bridges indicate that relatively stable response to strong ground motions can be obtained if the system is proportioned and detailed so that the predominant inelastic response is restricted to flexure in the column. In this case, it is important to know the strength of the column so that strengths of adjacent components can be set high enough to avoid inelastic action in those components. Details also are required that will enable the column to sustain the necessary inelastic deformations without disabling loss of resistance. Of interest are...

Structural Engineering Reconnaissance of the August 17, 1999 Earthquake: Kocaeli (Izmit), Turkey, PEER Report 2000-09

Halil Sezen
Kenneth J. Elwood
Andrew S. Whittaker
Khalid M. Mosalam
John W. Wallace
John F. Stanton
2000

In late August and early September 1999, a team of structural engineers representing the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research (PEER) Center traveled to Turkey to study damaged and undamaged buildings, bridges, industrial facili- ties, and lifeline infrastructure affected by the August 17, 1999, Izmit earthquake. The PEER reconnaissance team sought to improve the un- derstanding of the performance of the built environment and to identify gaps in a PEER research agenda that is developing knowledge and design tools for performance-based earthquake engineering.

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The Second U.S.-Japan Workshop on Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering Methodology for Reinforced Concrete Building Structures, PEER Report 2000-10

Japan Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center U.S. National Science Foundation
2000

Considerable research is under way throughout the world to establish performance-based assessment and design methodology for buildings. Japan and the United States are at the forefront of this research effort, as well as efforts to implement the research results. The U.S.-Japan Cooperative Research in Urban Earthquake Disa ster Mitigation, sponsored in Japan by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, and in the U.S. by the National Science Foundation, is funding collaborative research in Japan and the U.S. The Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center in the U.S. has...

Experimental Study of Large Seismic Steel Beam-to-Column Connections, PEER Report 2001-01

Egor P. Popov
Shakhzod M. Takhirov
2001

Two large bolted steel moment-resisting connections were studied by experiments. These connections were single-sided beam-column assemblies that are representative of exterior beam-column connections. They were composed of W36x150 Grade 50 beams and W14x257 Grade 50 columns. T-sections were cut from W40x264 sections of Grade 50 steel. The T-section webs were welded to the beams and prestressed by bolts to the beam flanges in the shop. Final beam-to-column assembly required no additional welding: the T-section flanges were bolted to the column and the column shear tab was bolted to the beam...