Large-Scale Experimental Facilities in the George E. Brown Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation for Advancing Seismic Design of Bridges

Significant research has been devoted to new and existing bridge seismic performance improvement over the past three decades. A performance-based design methodology has been developed as a result, but, for all but the simplest of bridge types, there is insufficient current state of the art for methodology implementation. The research agenda is being set due to consequent demand for advanced bridge performance knowledge. For three-dimensional dynamic nonlinear structural system analysis, there is widely available sophisticated computational tools, although existing knowledge and past experience limits these tools, which are based on existing structural performance notions. Bridge response understanding outside current knowledge bounds requires rigorous performance-based design (PBD). A powerful but limited tool is numerical modeling and fundamental models sophisticated enough to satisfy PBD requirements are lacking. It is believed that an experimental effort at a scale that can only now be considered is required for model development and calibration, now that the United States, Japan, and Taiwan have completed large-scale experimental facilities, and China and Korea are constructing similar facilities. The author describes United States facilities, distributed nationwide and interconnected by the George E. Brown Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES), a high speed broadband internet-based network. Fifteen university-based equipment sites offering state-of-the-art experimental facilities and a grid-based cyberinfrastructure that both enables remote access to these facilities and fosters collaboration, data sharing, and research dissemination are included in NEES. Collaborative research is seen as key to progress acceleration, experiment sophistication elevation, and improved performance-based design implementation confidence.