Representative:

Professor Wilfred Iwan, Director
Earthquake Engineering Research Laboratory
Mail Code 104-44
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, CA 91125
tel.: 626-395-4144
fax: 626-568-2719
e-mail: wdiwan@caltech.edu

Members:

James L. Beck, John F. Hall, Thomas Heaton, Donald V. Helmberger, George W. Housner, Wilfred D. Iwan, Paul C. Jennings, Hiroo Kanamori, Swaminathan Krishnan, and Kerry Sieh

Website: www.caltech.edu

Other Directory Information

Earthquake Engineering Research Library
Mail Code 104-44
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, CA 91125
Tel.: 626-395-4227
Fax: 626-568-2719
e-mail: eerllib@caltech.edu

Library web site: www.library.caltech.edu/collections/earthquake.htm

EERL web site: www.eerl.caltech.edu/eerl.html

COMET web site: comet.caltech.edu

R-SHAPE web site: www.r-shape.caltech.edu

Earthquake engineering research at Caltech dates

View of the Caltech Campus

back to the 1920s, when R.R. Martel, professor of structural engineering, began a program of postgraduate research on destructive ground motions and the dynamics of structures following the Santa Barbara Earthquake of 1925. The results of these pioneering investigations led to important improvements in building codes in the 1930s and 1940s. In subsequent years, Caltech researchers have been leaders in the development of instruments to monitor and record ground and building motions, and in the development of codes and analytical and numerical methods for the analysis structural response. Recent research topics include: reliability assessment and life-cycle costs for performance-based seismic design, active and semi-active control of structures, real-time and off-line structural health monitoring, numerical simulation of earthquake ground motions, improved methods of structural response analysis, and studies of the response of important structural types ranging from wood-framed structures to dams and high-rise buildings.

Earthquake Engineering Research Laboratory (EERL)

The Laboratory was formed in the 1960’s and has a long and distinguished history of being at the forefront of earthquake engineering research. Funding for EERL research activities comes from a variety of sources including federal and state government agencies and private companies.

Albert Niu Lin Laboratory of Structural Dynamics

The Lin Laboratory of Structural Dynamics, named in honor of a former Caltech Ph.D. graduate in earthquake engineering, is partially supported by a grant from the Lin family. Equipment includes two 5,000-pound capacity harmonic shakers for forced-vibration field testing of actual structures at frequencies up to 10 Hertz and a 3-ft by 3-ft hydraulic shaking table that is used for testing of model structures, such as dams. A variety of electrodynamic shakers are also employed for model testing. The Laboratory maintains an extensive system of strong motion recording devices for field use and a local array of strong ground motion instruments on the campus grounds, and in buildings at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Earthquake Engineering Research Library

The Earthquake Engineering Research Library was established with funding from the National Science Foundation as part of the Earthquake Engineering Research Laboratory. The Library has grown from the collection assembled by Professor R. R. Martel following the 1933 Long Beach Earthquake. For more than 25 years, the collection has been personally supervised by Professor G. W. Housner, resulting in a unique resource containing many documents not available elsewhere. The Library is open to the public and has 35 active journal subscriptions and some 13,000 books and reports. Reports of the Laboratory’s research have been published since 1952, and are now available on the web at:

http://caltecheerl.library.caltech.edu/

Strong Motion Center

Strong motion studies have been a major research focus of the Caltech earthquake engineering faculty for many years. Caltech maintains an unequaled collection of materials on this subject including original film recordings of many of the world’s most important accelerograms. In 1991, the Strong Motion Center (SMC) was established to maintain a full-featured strong motion data processing system that includes hardware and software for the digitization of analog accelerograms, playback equipment for most digital accelerographs, state-of-the-art baseline correction software, and plotting software and hardware. SMC also distributes a PC-based software package called CIT-SMARTS.

Millikan Full-Scale Structural Monitoring Laboratory

The nine-story Millikan Library building on the Caltech campus is one of the best instrumented and most studied buildings in the world. The response of this building has been recorded in all major Southern California earthquakes since its opening in 1969. In addition, an eccentric mass force generator mounted on the roof is regularly used to excite the building for the purpose of measuring its dynamic properties, and also to induce wave energy into the surrounding soil and even the basin bedrock to study the propagation of seismic waves and their interaction with structures. The building also serves as a full-scale test structure for the development and testing of structural health and performance monitoring methodologies. There are currently two web-based monitoring systems installed in the building and a 36 channel triggered recording system operated by the USGS. The two web-based systems are the COMET system and the R-SHAPE system. The R-SHAPE system provides real-time access to the all 36 channels of data available in the building. The COMET system provides online modal identification and data warehousing using the 9th floor accelerations. Both systems are continually under development and are used for research as well as educational purposes.

In earthquake engineering, recent research at Caltech has involved studies of the ultimate capacity of steel structures to resist very strong shaking, the nature of the ground shaking near the earthquake source, and optimal reliability-based earthquake-resistant design. Other research in structural mechanics is concerned with “smart structures” technologies such as structural health monitoring and active and semi-active control of structural response under earthquake excitation. Soil mechanics research has focussed on soil dynamics and liquefaction induced by earthquakes, as well as centrifuge testing of soil models and the behavior of granular media. Joint research projects in engineering seismology involving faculty in EERL and Caltech’s Seismological Laboratory are common.

Faculty in the earthquake engineering group are playing an active role in organizations formed by university researchers to support research and education in earthquake engineering. These organizations have budgets of several million dollars per year from industrial, state and federal funding. One large multi-year CUREE project has involved a comprehensive study to improve earthquake-resistant design of wood buildings. This project is sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and is directed by Caltech.

The earthquake engineering program attracts graduate students of the highest caliber from U.S. and overseas universities. Recent Ph.D. graduates have worked on the dynamic response of uncertain nonlinear systems, statistical system identification applied to seismic response, optimal design of building structures using genetic algorithms, the failure modes of braced steel-frame structures under earthquake shaking, effects of pulse-like near-field earthquake motions on the response of buildings, active interaction control of structures, probabilistic treatment of robust active control, and physical scale modeling of geotechnical structures.

Requirements and Procedures

Admission will be granted each year to only a limited number of students of superior ability and motivation. In general, graduate admission is effective for enrollment only at the beginning of the academic year at the end of September. Completed applications are due in the Graduate Office by no later than January 15. Applicants are encouraged to submit their applications as early as possible. Application forms may be downloaded from Caltech’s web site. Degree requirements are specified in the annually published Caltech Catalog.

Master of Science

The Master of Science is a professional degree designed to prepare a student for teaching, further graduate studies, or more advanced work in industry. The program consists of advanced coursework planned in consultation with the faculty. Under normal circumstances, the requirements can be completed in one academic year.

Engineer

The work for an Engineer’s degree consists of advanced studies and research and must conform to the requirements established in consultation with the faculty concerned.

Doctor of Philosophy

The degree of Doctor of Philosophy is conferred primarily in recognition of breadth of scholarship, depth of research, and the ability to investigate problems independently and efficiently. There are some course requirements, as listed in the Caltech Catalog for the relevant Option, in addition to research and preparation of a thesis.