• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2012

In this paper, the reduction factors to calculate the site coefficients of an embedded foundation are estimated, considering the effect of a poor backfill for the seismic design of a building built on an embedded foundation. This is determined by utilizing in-house finite element software, P3DASS, which has the capability of horizontal pseudo 3D seismic analysis with nonlinear soil. The 30m thick soil on stiff rock was assumed to be homogeneous, elastic, viscous and isotropic, and equivalent circular rigid foundations with radii of 10-70m were assumed to be embedded 0, 10, 20, and 30 m in the soil. Seismic analyses were performed with 7 bedrock earthquake records de-convoluted from the outcrop records; the scaling of the peak ground accelerations were to 0.1 g. The study results show that the site coefficients of a poor-backfilled foundation are gradually reduced as the foundation embedment ratio increases, except in the case of a small foundation embedded deeply in the weak soft soil. In addition, it was found that the deviation of the site coefficients due to the foundation size was not significant. Therefore, the typical reduction factors of an embedded foundation with poor backfill are proposed in terms of the shear wave velocity and site class. This is in order to find the site coefficients of an embedded foundation by multiplying the reduction factor by a site coefficient of a surface foundation specified in the design code. They can then be interpolated to determine the intermediate shear wave velocity.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.1-15
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• 2010

In this study, the reduction factor of the code-defined site coefficient due to the embedment of a foundation was estimated for the seismic analysis of a building built on a soft soil site. This was done by utilizing the in-house finite element software P3DASS, which has the capability of pseudo 3D seismic analysis with nonlinear soil layers. A 30m thick soft soil site laid on the rock was assumed to be homogeneous, elastic, viscous and isotropic, and equivalent circular rigid foundations with radii of 10-70m were considered to be embedded at 0, 10, 20 and 30m in the soil layer. Seismic analyses were performed with 7 bedrock earthquake records deconvoluted from the outcrop records of which the effective ground acceleration was scaled to 0.1g. The study results showed that the site coefficients are gradually reduced except in the case of a small foundation embedded deeply in the weak soil layer, and it was estimated that the deviation of the site coefficients due to the foundation size was not significant. The standard reduction factor due to the foundation embedment were calculated adding the standard deviation to the average of 5 reduction factors calculated for 5 different foundation radii. Standard reduction factors for the site amplification factor were proposed for the practical amplification and the codes of KBC, etc., in accordance with the average shear wave velocity of the site, and the site class.