Dataset from the shake table tests of a rocking podium structure

Abstract

Conventional validation of analytical and numerical models in Earthquake Engineering involves the comparison of numerically simulated response time histories to experimentally obtained benchmark responses to the same earthquake excitations. As the seismic design problem is inherently stochastic, an alternative, statistical, and easier-to-pass validation procedure has been suggested. As an example, numerical and analytical models may fail to predict the planar rocking response of a rigid block to a specific ground motion, but they can be proven quite successful in predicting the statistical distribution of the maxima of that response to an ensemble of ground motions. This article describes the publicly available data obtained from a series of 226 shake table tests of a 3D rocking podium structure, designed at ETH Zurich and carried out at EQUALS Lab, University of Bristol. This well-documented dataset is the largest one involving a shake table and can be used to statistically validate analytical and numerical models of rocking structures.