PEER Reports

Construction or detailed evaluation of transportation infrastructure requires site-specific ground motions for input into nonlinear structural models. These site-specific ground motions are generally selected based on the magnitude, distance, and site condition of the recorded ground motion. A preliminary study performed by Slate Geotechnical Consultants found that duration and spectral acceleration are negatively correlated for large-magnitude earthquakes recorded on soft-soil sites (Vs30<360 m/s). This means that if the target spectral acceleration is above average, then the average...

The UC San Diego Large High-Performance Outdoor Shake Table (LHPOST), which was commissioned on October 1, 2004 as a shared-use experimental facility of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) program, was upgraded from its original one degree-of-freedom (LHPOST) to a six degree-of-freedom configuration (LHPOST6) between October 2019 and April 2022. The LHPOST6 is a shared-use experimental facility of the NSF Natural Hazard Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) program. A mechanics-based numerical model of the LHPOST6 able to capture...

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...