An Investigation into the Effect of Simultaneous Modelling of Soil-Foundation-Structure Interaction and Beam-Column Connections on the Seismic Responses of Steel Moment-Resisting Frames

The seismic behavior of special steel moment-resisting frames (SMRF) is a function of several parameters such as beams and columns cross-sectional shapes and its width to thickness ratios, column-to-beam strength ratio, beam-column connections, soil conditions, foundation types. The simultaneous modeling effects of some of these parameters are investigated in this paper. The soil-foundation-structure interaction (SFSI), shallow foundation types, and safety factor variation are the studied parameters. For this purpose, five and ten-story buildings with SMRFs resting on two soil types (S-C and S-E) are considered. The footing and strip foundations were designed for 5-story buildings, and strip foundation was only designed for 10-story buildings. The effect of simultaneously considering connections and SFSI impacts show that models rested on the S-E have higher maximum lateral displacement. However, the maximum base-shear is reduced at these models. In models rested on the S-C, by considering the impact of SFSI and connections, both structure responses are diminished, and the foundation types do not have any effect on the responses of these models. However, in models resting on the S-E, the dependency of responses to the footing foundation is more than strip foundations.