Database of rocking shallow foundation performance: Dynamic shaking

Several experimental studies have shown that rocking shallow foundations have beneficial seismic performance features: recentering and energy dissipation with little damage. A new publicly available database, “FoRDy” (Foundation Rocking—Dynamic), summarizes the results of dynamic physical model tests of single-degree-of-freedom-like structures supported on rocking foundations. It contains data from five centrifuge and three 1-g shaking table test series that were conducted at experimental facilities in the United States, Greece, and Japan. The database includes 200 model “case histories” that span a wide range of model sizes, soil and structure properties, and seismic excitations. It is compiled as the first step toward building a comprehensive dynamic rocking foundation database, and it has the potential to grow in the future. To illustrate its usefulness, the data are used to show example correlations between the peak drift ratio demand and selected ground motion intensity measures. The results suggest that peak ground velocity (PGV), peak ground displacement (PGD), and the geometric mean of the linear spectral displacement over the period range of 0.2–3 times the initial natural period predict the peak drift ratio response reliably.