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FOREWORD Highway administrators, engineers, and researchers often face problems for which infor-
mation already exists, either in documented form or as undocumented experience and prac-
tice. This information may be fragmented, scattered, and unevaluated. As a consequence,
full knowledge of what has been learned about a problem may not be brought to bear on its
solution. Costly research findings may go unused, valuable experience may be overlooked,
and due consideration may not be given to recommended practices for solving or alleviat-
ing the problem.
There is information on nearly every subject of concern to highway administrators and
engineers. Much of it derives from research or from the work of practitioners faced with
problems in their day-to-day work. To provide a systematic means for assembling and
evaluating such useful information and to make it available to the entire highway commu-
nity, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials--through
the mechanism of the National Cooperative Highway Research Program--authorized the
Transportation Research Board to undertake a continuing study. This study, NCHRP Proj-
ect 20-5, "Synthesis of Information Related to Highway Problems," searches out and syn-
thesizes useful knowledge from all available sources and prepares concise, documented
reports on specific topics. Reports from this endeavor constitute an NCHRP report series,
Synthesis of Highway Practice.
This synthesis series reports on current knowledge and practice, in a compact format,
without the detailed directions usually found in handbooks or design manuals. Each report
in the series provides a compendium of the best knowledge available on those measures
found to be the most successful in resolving specific problems.
PREFACE This study identifies and describes current practice and available methods for evaluating
the influence of local ground conditions on earthquake design ground motions on a site-
By Jon M. Williams
specific basis. Information includes criteria used to determine when a site-specific analysis
Program Director is needed, how to develop input parameters required for a site-response analysis, the nature
Transportation of the site-response analysis performed (equivalent-linear, total stress nonlinear, effective-
Research Board stress nonlinear), the process of model setup, and how uncertainties are dealt with in the
analysis process. Information was gathered by a literature review and a survey of state
departments of transportation and selected academics.
Neven Matasovic, Geosyntec Consultants, Huntington Beach, California, and Youssef
Hashash, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, collected and synthesized the infor-
mation and wrote the report. The members of the topic panel are acknowledged on the pre-
ceding page. This synthesis is an immediately useful document that records the practices
that were acceptable within the limitations of the knowledge available at the time of its
preparation. As progress in research and practice continues, new knowledge will be added
to that now at hand.
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