The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

Shaking table tests of a tubular steel frame model

Ghanaat, Yusof; Clough, Ray W.

UCB/EERC-82/02, Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, 1982-01, 150 pages (530/G48/1982)

This report presents the experimental results of a two-dimensional x-braced tubular steel offshore platform model subjected to shaking table motions simulating earthquake excitations. The test frame was a 5/48-scale model of a representative Southern California platform, designed according to American Petroleum Inst. wave and earthquake criteria. The main purpose of this research was to measure the dynamic response and failure mechanism to be expected of a typical offshore frame subjected to damaging earthquake motions. A special testing system was designed to provide lateral support to the test model while introducing no constraints in the longitudinal and vertical directions. This arrangement permitted applying a lateral force sufficient to produce major failure in the single test frame, whereas a complete structure including two parallel frames like this could not have been subjected to a failure load. The experimental data provide information on the global inelastic behavior of tubular braced frames, which can be used to verify and extend the ability of existing analytical techniques to predict the behavior of offshore structures under extreme earthquake conditions.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/EERC/EERC-82-02.pdf (12 MB)