Damage-based seismic planar pounding analysis of adjacent symmetric buildings considering inelastic structure-soil-structure interaction

In cities and urban areas, building structures located at close proximities inevitably interact under dynamic loading by direct pounding and indirectly through the underlying soil. Majority of the previous adjacent building pounding studies that have taken the structure-soil-structure interaction (SSSI) problem into account have used simple lumped mass-spring-dashpot models under plane strain conditions. In this research, the problem of SSSI-included pounding problem of two adjacent symmetric in plan buildings resting on a soft soil profile excited by uniaxial earthquake loadings is investigated. To this end, a series of SSSI models considering one-directional nonlinear impact elements between adjacent co-planar stories and using a method for direct finite element modeling of 3D inelastic underlying soil volume has been developed to accurately study the problem. An advanced inelastic structural behavior parameter, the seismic damage index, has been considered in this study as the key nonlinear structural response of adjacent buildings. Based on the results of SSSI and fixed base case analyses presented herein, two main problems are investigated, namely, the minimum building separation distance for pounding prevention and seismic pounding effects on structural damage in adjacent buildings. The final results show that at least three times, the International Building Code 2009 minimum distance for building separation recommended value is required as a clear distance for adjacent symmetric buildings to prevent the occurrence of seismic pounding. At the International Building Code-recommended distance, adjacent buildings experienced severe seismic pounding and therefore significant variations in storey shear forces and damage indices. Copyright (c) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.