The impact of a PEER funded research project "Probabilistic Simulation-Based Evaluation of the Effect of Near-Field Spatially Varying Ground Motions on Distributed Infrastructure Systems" is highlighted below. The project Principal Investigator (PI) is Floriana Petrone, Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering, University of Nevada Reno. The research team includes Norman Abrahamson, Adjunct Professor, UC Berkeley, and David McCallen, Professor, University of Nevada Reno.
Download the Research Project Highlight which includes the abstract. (PDF)
Research Impact:
Traditional approaches to earthquake structural risk evaluation rely on Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis (PSHA), whereby the potential damage of a particular structure is evaluated from fragility functions and hazard curves derived based on an ergodic assumption of earthquake processes. Although widely employed, this methodology does not fully account for the potentially large site-specific variability of the demand for sites in the vicinity of a major fault nor the sensitivity of structural response to specific ground motion characteristics that are not represented by hazard curves.Leveraging the use of a statistically significant database of simulated broadband ground motions and advanced structural model simulation tools will provide new understanding of the influence of ground motion spatial variability on long-period distributed systems. Covering a broad range of frequencies and ground motion features represents a key aspect for the analysis of long-span bridge structures, which can exhibit very low frequencies (0.1Hz to 0.05Hz) associated to the long wavelength modes of the deck system and relatively high frequencies associated to the vibration of the bridge towers (5 to 8 Hz). While work is being conducted on the use of simulated ground motions (1 Hz resolution) for structural response analysis, the proposed research will adopt a suite of fully validated simulated broadband records to represent the site-specific demand on the structural systems with associated probability of occurrence and structural systems models that include uncertainties. The proposed research addresses a topic of high interest to the scientific and engineering community and can inform infrastructure design and evaluation on a risk-informed basis.
a) Geophysics model of the San Francisco Bay Area b) Representative long-period bridge
c) Demonstrative model results for the evaluation of seismic risk variability