Earthquake performance simulation

Earthquake performance simulation is meant to study effect of earthquakes on building structures and is a practical way of seeing a thing to happen without it actually taking place in the same way. There are research institutions just devoted to earthquake performance simulations, like, e.g., The George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation or NEES.

Physical earthquake performance simulation
The best way to do it is to put the structure on a shake-table that simulates the seismic loads and watch what may happen next (if you have no time to stand out in the field and wait for a real earthquake to strike, of course). The earliest experiments like this were performed more than a century ago

Computational earthquake performance simulation
Another way is to evaluate the earthquake performance analytically. The very first earthquake simulations were performed by statically applying some horizontal inertia forces, based on scaled peak ground accelerations, to a mathematical model of a building. With the further development of computational technologies, statics approaches began to give way to dynamics ones.

Earthquake performance animation
GIF animation of a seismic performance of building models at a variety of ground shaking may be an effective means of research and education.

Other websites

 * Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES)
 * AEM Earthquake Simulation