• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.377-386
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• 2017

Earthquake-induced pounding damages to building structures were repeatedly observed in many previous major earthquakes. Extensive researches have been carried out in this field. Previous studies mainly focused on the regular shaped buildings and each building was normally simplified as a single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) system or a multi-degree-of-freedom (MDOF) system by assuming the masses of the building lumped at the floor levels. The researches on the pounding responses between irregular asymmetric buildings are rare. For the asymmetric buildings subjected to earthquake loading, torsional vibration modes of the structures are excited, which in turn may significantly change the structural responses. Moreover, contact element was normally used to consider the pounding phenomenon in previous studies, which may result in inaccurate estimations of the structural responses since this method is based on the point-to-point pounding assumption with the predetermined pounding locations. In reality, poundings may take place between any locations. In other words, the pounding locations cannot be predefined. To more realistically consider the arbitrary poundings between asymmetric structures, detailed three-dimensional (3D) finite element models (FEM) and arbitrary pounding algorithm are necessary. This paper carries out numerical simulations on the pounding responses between a symmetric rectangular-shaped building and an asymmetric L-shaped building by using the explicit finite element code LS-DYNA. The detailed 3D FEMs are developed and arbitrary 3D pounding locations between these two buildings under bi-directional earthquake ground motions are investigated. Special attention is paid to the relative locations of two adjacent buildings. The influences of the left-and-right, fore-and-aft relative locations and separation gap between the two buildings on the pounding responses are systematically investigated.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.1127-1146
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• 2015

The excitation angle or angle of incidence is the angle in which the horizontal seismic components are applied with respect to the principal structural axes during a time history analysis. In this study, numerical simulations and parametric studies are performed for the investigation of the effect of the angle of seismic incidence on the response of adjacent buildings, which may experience structural pounding during strong earthquakes due to insufficient or no separation distance between them. A specially developed software application has been used that implements a simple and efficient methodology, according to which buildings are modelled in three dimensions and potential impacts are simulated using a novel impact model that takes into account the arbitrary location of impacts and the geometry at the point of impact. Two typical multi-storey buildings and a set of earthquake records have been used in the performed analyses. The results of the conducted parametric studies reveal that it is very important to consider the arbitrary direction of the ground motion with respect to the structural axes of the simulated buildings, especially during pounding, since, in many cases, the detrimental effects of pounding become more pronounced for an excitation angle different from the commonly examined 0 or 90 degrees.