PEER Reports

PEER Reports

PEER NGA-East Database, PEER Report 2014-17

Christine A. Goulet
Tadahiro Kishida
Timothy D. Ancheta
Chris H. Cramer
Robert B. Darragh
Walter J. Silva
Youssef M.A. Hashash
Joseph Harmon
Jonathan P. Stewart
Katie E. Wooddell
Robert R. Youngs
2014

This report serves as a documentation of the ground motion database development for the NGA-East Project. The ground motion database includes the two- and three-component ground-motion recordings from numerous selected events (M > 2.5, distances up to 1500 km) recorded in the Central and Eastern North America (CENA) region since 1988. The final database contains over 29,000 records from 81 earthquake events and 1379 recording stations. The time series and metadata collected went through numerous rounds of quality assurance and review. The NGA-East database constitutes the largest...

Three-Dimensional Beam-Truss Model for Reinforced-Concrete Walls and Slabs Subjected to Cyclic Static or Dynamic Loading, PEER Report 2014-18

Yuan Lu
Marios Panagiotou
Ioannis Koutromanos
2014

The three-dimensional (3D) beam-truss model (BTM) for reinforced concrete (RC) walls, which was developed by the first two authors in a previously published paper, is modified to better represent flexure-shear interaction and more accurately compute diagonal shear failures under static cyclic or dynamic loading. The modifications pertain to the element formulations and the determination of the inclination angle of the diagonal elements. Moreover the BTM is extended to allow the simulation of RC slabs. The modified BTM is validated using the experimental test data of eight RC walls...

Seismic Response of a Hybrid Fiber-Reinforced Concrete Bridge Column Detailed for Accelerated Bridge Construction, PEER Report 2014-19

Wilson Nguyen
William Trono
Marios Panagiotou
Claudia P. Ostertag
2014

With the expected rehabilitation and replacement of damaged reinforced concrete bridges to occur in the next several decades, an opportunity exists to design bridge columns that have an accelerated construction schedule, which would reduce costs related to traffic closures and productivity loss, and to design columns that exhibit enhanced crack resistance, which would reduce damage from seismic events and long-term environmental degradation. This study investigates the feasibility of using a precast hybrid fiber-reinforced concrete (HyFRC) tube element as the exterior shell of a bridge...

Concrete Column Blind Prediction Contest 2010: Outcomes and Observations, PEER Report 2015-01

Vesna Terzic
Matthew J. Schoettler
Jose I. Restrepo
Stephen A. Mahin
2015

Performance-based earthquake engineering (PBEE) is based on the premise that the performance of engineered facilities can be predicted and evaluated with sufficient degree of confidence. However, prediction of system response greatly depends on the analyst’s experience and modeling skills. Therefore, the uncertainty with which the engineering community can predict response of a system or one of its components should be realistically quantified in PBEE. A blind prediction contest of a full-scale reinforced-concrete bridge column exposed to six consecutive unidirectional ground motions of...

A Full-Scale, Single-Column Bridge Bent Tested by Shake-Table Excitation, PEER Report 2015-02

Matthew J. Schoettler
Jose I. Restrepo
Gabriele Guerrini
David E. Duck
Francesco Carrea
2015

A landmark test of a reinforced concrete bridge column was conducted on the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation’s shake table at the University of California, San Diego. This was the first full-scale bridge column, designed to current US seismic design provisions, to be tested under dynamic conditions on a shake table. Caltrans seismic design guidelines were followed for the design and detailing of the 1.22-m- (4-ft-) diameter, 7.32-m- (24-ft-) tall column. The flexure-dominated specimen was subjected to ten significant ground motions and tested to impending...

Hybrid Simulation of Seismic Isolation Systems Applied to an APR-1400 Nuclear Power Plant, PEER Report 2015-05

Andreas H. Schellenberg
Alireza Sarebanha
Matthew J. Schoettler
Gilberto Mosqueda
Gianmario Benzoni
Stephen A. Mahin
2015

Since the dynamic response of an isolated structure depends on the combined characteristics of the ground motion, bearings, and structure, standard isolator prototype component tests may not by themselves be sufficient to assess seismic performance and verify the adequacy of numerical models used for computer simulation. Thus, when assessing the applicability of seismic isolation to nuclear power facilities, tests that simulate dynamic response under realistic excitations are desired. However, available shaking tables have limits on the size, strength, and weight of the specimens they can...

Shear-Flexure Interaction Modeling for Reinforced Concrete Structural Walls and Columns under Reversed Cyclic Loading, PEER Report 2015-12

Kristijan Kolozvari
Kutay Orakcal
John Wallace
2015

A novel analytical model that captures interaction between axial/flexural and shear responses in reinforced concrete (RC) walls and columns under reversed-cyclic loading conditions has been developed and implemented in the computational platform OpenSees. The proposed modeling approach incorporates RC panel behavior described with a constitutive fixed-strut-angle panel model into a two-dimensional Multiple-Vertical-Line-Element-Model (MVLEM) formulation. The coupling of axial and shear responses is achieved at the macro-fiber (panel) level, which further allows coupling of...

Self-Centering Precast Concrete Dual-Steel-Shell Columns for Accelerated Bridge Construction: Seismic Performance, Analysis, and Design, PEER Report 2015-13

Gabriele Guerrini
Jose I. Restrepo
Athanassios Vervelidis
Milena Massari
2015

This study presents an innovative bridge column technology for application in seismic regions. The proposed technology combines a precast, post-tensioned, composite steel–concrete, hollow-core column with supplemental energy dissipation, in such way to reduce on-site construction burdens and minimize earthquake-induced residual deformations, damage, and associated repair costs. The column consists of two steel cylindrical shells, with high-performance concrete cast in between. Both shells act as permanent formwork. The outer shell substitutes the longitudinal and transverse reinforcement,...

Seismic Evaluation and Retrofit of Existing Tall Buildings in California: Case Study of a 35-Story Steel Moment-Resisting Frame Building in San Francisco, PEER Report 2015-14

Jiun-Wei Lai
Shanshan Wang
Matthew J. Schoettler
Stephen A. Mahin
2015

The seismic performance of new tall buildings located in regions of high seismic hazard has been recently investigated by Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) under its Tall Buildings Initiative (TBI) program. This program has now expanded to assess the seismic performance of existing tall buildings. Buildings being considered are 20 stories or more in height and were constructed on the west coast of the U.S. between about 1960 and 1990. During that period, several hundred tall buildings were constructed in California, but earthquake-resistant design procedures were not as...

A Methodology for the Estimation of Kappa (k) from Large Datasets: Example Application to Rock sites in the NGA-East Database and Implications on Design Motions, PEER Report 2016-01

Olga-Joan Ktenidou
Norman A. Abrahamson
Robert B. Darragh
Walter J. Silva
2016

This report reviews four of the main approaches (two band-limited and two broadband) currently used for estimating the site κ0 : the acceleration slope (AS) above the corner frequency, the displacement slope (DS) below the corner frequency, the broadband (BB) fit of the spectrum, and the response spectral shape (RESP) template. Using these four methods, estimates of κ0 for rock sites in Central Eastern North America (CENA) in the shallow crustal dataset from NGA- East are computed for distances less than 100 km.

Using all of the data within 100 km, the mean κ0...