through the last three decades different seismological and engineering approaches for the generation of artificial earthquakes have been proposed. selection of an appropriate method for the generation of applicable artificial earthquake accelerograms (aeas) has been a challenging subject in the time history analysis of the structures in the case of the absence of sufficient recorded accelerogra...

The importance of our infrastructure systems as the foundations for our civilization, maintaining the health of our society and serving as the engines for our economy has been articulated by the NSF and other government agencies since the 1970’s. The National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP), created by the US Congress by the Earthquake Hazards Reduction Act of 1977 was based on rec...

The simulation of structural and geotechnical systems is a critical step in their design and assessment. The purpose of an earthquake simulation is to estimate the performance of the system under seismic excitation or loads that represent the effects of an earthquake. Structural and geotechnical simulation has a long history of development in earthquake engineering. The computation required to ...

Background: The 2008 Wenchuan earthquake triggered many rapid and long runout landslides, which directly caused great loss of property and human lives and were responsible for a large percentage of total damages caused by the earthquake. It is very important for the purposes of landslide disaster prevention and mitigation to understand the earthquake triggered mechanism of initiation and motion...

We study dynamic rupture propagation on flat faults using 2D plane strain models featuring strongly rate-weakening fault friction (in a rate-and-state framework) and off-fault Drucker–Prager viscoplasticity. Plastic deformation bounds stresses near the rupture front and limits slip velocities to ∼10 m=s, a bound expected to be independent of earthquake magnitude. As originally shown for rupture...

The 2015 Gorkha Nepal earthquake caused tremendous damage and loss. To gain valuable lessons from this tragic event, an earthquake damage investigation team was dispatched to Nepal from 1 May 2015 to 7 May 2015. A unique aspect of the earthquake damage investigation is that first-hand earthquake damage data were obtained 6–11 days after the mainshock. To gain deeper understanding of the observe...

As part of research collaboration between MCEER and the National Center for Research in Earthquake Engineering (NCREE) in Taiwan, a team of MCEER/NCREE researchers undertook a reconnaissance mission shortly after the 921 Chi-Chi earthquake occurred in Taiwan at 1:47 a.m. on September 21, 1999. A major objective of this mission was to assess earthquake-induced damage, to document lessons learned...