ESTIMATING MAXIMUM POUNDING FORCE BETWEEN TWO ADJACENT STRUCTURES

Seismic pounding between adjacent buildings with inadequate separation and different dynamic characteristics can cause severe damage to the colliding buildings. Therefore, the earthquake resistant design of structures due to pounding needs the knowledge of maximum pounding force. Efficient estimation of the maximum pounding force is required to control the extent of damage in adjacent structures. In this paper, an analytical approach on the basis of statistical relations is presented for the approximate computation of maximum pounding force between two adjacent single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) systems subjected to stationary and non-stationary excitations. The pounding effect has been simulated by applying the nonlinear viscoelastic model. The proposed approach can significantly save computational costs by obviating the need for performing dynamic analysis and accurately estimating the maximum of pounding force. Accuracy of the proposed approach in comparison with the exact method is investigated using nonlinear dynamic analysis.