Modeling of seismic wave motion in high-rise buildings

This study examines one-dimensional wave propagation in a multi-story building with seismic excitation. In particular, the building is modeled as a series of shear beams for columns/walls and lumped masses for floors. Wave response at one location of the building is then derived to an impulsive motion such as displacement and acceleration at another location in time and frequency domains, termed here as wave-based or generalized impulse and frequency response function (GIRF and GFRF), which is dependent upon the building characteristics above the impulse location. Not only does this study illustrate features of GIRF and GFRF in terms of building properties, it also shows broad-based applications of the modeling. Two examples are presented with the use of the modeling. One is wave-based characterization of ten-story Millikan Library in Pasadena, California with the recordings of Yorba Linda earthquake of September 3, 2002. The other is analysis for influence of stochastic floor-to-column mass ratio, story-height and seismic input in seismic wave responses.