• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.71-87
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• 2014

Interaction between closely-spaced buildings subject to earthquake induced strong ground motions, termed in the literature as "seismic pounding", occurs commonly during major seismic events in contemporary congested urban environments. Seismic pounding is not taken into account by current codes of practice and is rarely considered in practice at the design stage of new buildings constructed "in contact" with existing ones. Thus far, limited research work has been devoted to quantify the influence of slab-to-slab pounding on the inelastic seismic demands at critical locations of structural members in adjacent structures that are not aligned in series. In this respect, this paper considers a typical case study of a "new" reinforced concrete (R/C) EC8-compliant, torsionally sensitive, 7-story corner building constructed within a block, in bi-lateral contact with two existing R/C 5-story structures with same height floors. A non-linear local plasticity numerical model is developed and a series of non-linear time-history analyses is undertaken considering the corner building "in isolation" from the existing ones (no-pounding case), and in combination with the existing ones (pounding case). Numerical results are reported in terms of averages of ratios of peak inelastic rotation demands at all structural elements (beams, columns, shear walls) at each storey. It is shown that seismic pounding reduces on average the inelastic demands of the structural members at the lower floors of the 7-story building. However, the discrepancy in structural response of the entire block due to torsion-induced, bi-directionally seismic pounding is substantial as a result of the complex nonlinear dynamics of the coupled building block system.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.395-402
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• 2018

Floor location of adjacent buildings may be different in terms of height elevation, and thus, the slab may hit on the columns of adjacent insufficiently separated buildings during severe ground motions. Such impacts, often referred to as mid-column pounding, can be catastrophic. Substantial pounding damage or even total collapse of structures was often observed in large amount of adjacent low rise buildings. The research on the mid-column pounding between low rise buildings is in urgency need. In present study, the responses of two adjacent low rise buildings with unequal heights and different dynamic properties have been analyzed. Parametric studies have also been conducted to assess the influence of story height difference, gap distance and input direction of ground motion on the effect of structural pounding response. Another emphasis of this study is to analyze the near-fault effect, which is important for the structures located in the near-fault area. The analysis results show that collisions exhibit significant influence on the local shear force response of the column suffering impact. Because of asymmetric configuration of systems, the structural seismic behavior is distinct by varying the incident directions of the ground motions. Results also show that near-fault earthquakes induced ground motions can cause more significant effect on the pounding responses.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.176-187
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• 2001

Most bridges have expansion joints to accommodate thermal expansion and contraction without inducing large forces in the bridges. To evaluate the effects of earthquake-induced at expansion joints of concrete bridges, the first part of this paper deals with a collinear impact between concrete segments, which have the same cross section but different lengths. Especially, impact force, momentum, strain energy and kinetic energy are formulated in mathematically. These results are then used in the second part of this paper to simulate a realistic yet simple analysis of seismic pounding in concrete bridges. Analysis of seismic pounding in idealized concrete bridges is carried out by using a simple lumped-mass model and rationally determined values of the coefficient of restitution and the duration of impact.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.83 no.2
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• pp.153-166
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• 2022

Structural pounding due to strong seismic excitations can result in severe damage or even collapse of colliding structures. Many researchers focused on studying the mutual pounding between two adjacent structures while very few researches were concerned with the pounding of a series of structures. This paper aims to study the pounding effect on a series of four buildings having different natural frequencies. The paper also investigates the effect of different arrangements of the four buildings on their pounding response. For this, a mathematical model was constructed using Matlab code where, pounding was modeled using a contact force-based approach. A Non-Linear viscoelastic (Hertzdamp) contact element was used and activated only during the approach period of collision. The mathematical model was validated by comparing its prediction versus experimental results on three adjacent buildings. Then the model was used to study the pounding between four adjacent structures arranged in different sequences according to their natural frequencies. The results revealed that increasing the gap distance generally led to decrease the peak responses of the towers. Such response is somehow different from that predicted earlier by the authors for the case of three adjacent buildings. Moreover, the arrangement of towers has a significant effect on their pounding response. Significant difference between the natural frequencies of adjacent structures increases the pounding forces especially when the more flexible buildings are located at the outer edge of the series. The study points out the need for further researches on buildings in series to gain a better understanding of such complex phenomena.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.625-635
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• 2022

High-rise buildings (HRBs) are considered one of the most common structures nowadays due to the population growth, especially in crowded towns. The lack of land in crowded cities has led to the convergence of the HRBs and the absence of any gaps between them, especially in lands with weak soil (e.g., liquefaction-prone soil), but then during earthquakes, these structures may be exposed to the risk of collision between them due to the large increase in the horizontal displacements, which may be destructive in some cases to the one or both of these adjacent buildings. To evaluate methods of reducing the risk of collision between adjacent twin HRBs, this research investigates three vibration control methods to reduce the risk of collision due to five different earthquakes for the case of two adjacent reinforced concrete (RC) twin high-rise buildings of 15 floors height without gap distance between them, founded on raft foundation supported on piles inside a liquefaction-prone soil. Contact pounding elements between the two buildings (distributed at all floor levels and at the raft foundation level) are used to make the impact strength between the two buildings realistic. The mitigation methods investigated are the base isolation, the tuned mass damper (TMD) method (using traditional TMDs), and the pounding tuned mass damper (PTMD) method (using PTMDs connected between the two buildings). The results show that the PTMD method between the two adjacent RC twin high-rise buildings is more efficient than the other two methods in mitigating the earthquake-induced pounding risk.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.463-479
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• 2020

Currently, there are many lateral resisting systems utilized in resisting lateral loads being produced in an earthquake. Such systems can significantly reduce the roof's displacement when placed at an optimum location. Since in the design of tall buildings, the minimum distance between adjacent buildings is important. In this paper, the critical excitation method is used to determine the best location of the belt truss system while calculating the minimum required distance between two adjacent buildings. For this purpose, the belt truss system is placed at a specific story. Then the critical earthquakes are computed so that the considered constraints are satisfied, and the value of roof displacement is maximized. This procedure is repeated for all stories; i.e., for each, a critical acceleration is computed. From this set of computed roof displacement values, the story with the least displacement is selected as the best location for the belt truss system. Numerical studies demonstrate that absolute roof displacements induced through critical accelerations range between 5.36 to 1.95 times of the San Fernando earthquake for the first example and 7.67 to 1.22 times of the San Fernando earthquake for the second example. This method can also be used to determine the minimum required distance between two adjacent buildings to eliminate the pounding effects. For this purpose, this value is computed based on different standard codes and compared with the results of the critical excitation method to show the ability of the proposed method.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.555-564
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• 2018

Allowing structures to uplift in earthquakes can significantly reduce or even avoid the development of plastic hinges within the structure. The permanent deformations in the structure can thus be minimized. However, uplift of footings can cause additional horizontal movements of a structure. With an increase in movement relative to adjacent structures, the probability of pounding between structures increases. This experimental study reveals that the footing mass can be used to control the vertical displacement of footing and thus reduce the horizontal displacements of an upliftable structure. A four storey model structure with plastic hinges and uplift capability was considered. Shake table tests using ten different earthquake records were conducted. Three different footing masses were considered. It is found that the amplitude of footing uplift can be greatly reduced by increasing the mass of the footing. As a result, allowing structural uplift does not necessary increase the horizontal displacement of the structure. The results show that with increasing footing weight, the interaction between structural and footing response can increase the contribution of the higher modes to the structural response. Consequently, the induced vibrations on secondary structure increase.