Damage assessment of adjacent buildings under earthquake loads

This paper deals with damage assessment of adjacent colliding buildings under strong ground motion. In previous studies, the structure input-response pair is used to examine pounding effects on adjacent buildings under seismic loads. In this paper, pounding of adjacent buildings is assessed using input energy, dissipated energy and damage indices. Damage indices (DI) are computed by comparing the structure’s responses demanded by earthquakes and the associated structural capacities. Damage indices provide quantitative estimates of structural damage level, and thus, a decision on necessary repair can be taken. Adjacent buildings with fixed-base and isolated-base are considered. The nonlinear viscoelastic model is used for capturing the induced pounding forces. Influences of the separation distance between buildings, buildings properties, such as, base-condition (fixed or isolated), and yield strength on damage of adjacent buildings are investigated. The set of input ground motions includes short-, moderate- and long-duration accelerograms measured at near-fault and far-fault regions with different soil types. Earthquake records with different characteristics are considered to study damage of adjacent buildings under seismic loads. Numerical illustrations on damage of fixed-base and isolated-base adjacent buildings with elastic–plastic force–deformation relation are provided.