Effects of seismic pounding between adjacent structures considering structure-soil-structure interaction

Abstract

Structures located beside each other interact under dynamic loads through the underlying soil and possibly by impact. In this paper, this dynamic cross-interaction phenomenon is studied parametrically. While simultaneous modeling of different adjacent buildings would be possible from the beginning, by resorting to simple physical models, the cases susceptible to impact under harmonic loads were identified first with much less effort. Then, comprehensive models were developed with two nonlinear multistory shear buildings connected at the base with suitable springs and dampers, impacting at the story level. The system was analyzed under selected ground motions. It was observed that impact and cross-interaction had an increasing effect on lateral displacement for stiff and heavy structures and a decreasing effect for other cases. Also, the shear forces of stories increased and decreased in the upper and lower stories, respectively, as a result of the mentioned mutual effect. Finally, the study indicated that under a sample ground motion, simultaneous impact and cross-interaction increased the ductility demand of stories for taller structures while it decreased the ductility demand of shorter buildings.