The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

Implications of the Landers and Big Bear earthquakes on earthquake resistant design of structures

Anderson, James C.; Bertero, Vitelmo V.

UCB/EERC-97/08, Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, 1997-07, 95 pages (705.326/1992L/A52)

The magnitude 7.3 Landers earthquake (1992) produced two long duration records of strong ground motion and one strong record in the near fault region. Three hours later the magnitude 6.2 Big Bear earthquake (1992) occurred some twenty miles to the west. Had these ground motions occurred in a populated region rather than on the western edge of the Mojave Desert, damage to all types of civil engineering facilities would have been substantial. Since there were no engineered structures in the region of strong ground motion for the Landers earthquake, the performances of a six story building and a seventeen story building, which had been studied previously, were evaluated for the recorded free field ground motions. The Big Bear earthquake which occurred in the San Bernardino Mountains, generated free field motions having high acceleration and high frequency content which are representative of rock motions. The most significant record from this earthquake was obtained in the free field near a two-story steel frame building.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/EERC/EERC-97-08.pdf (9 MB)