Analysis of Wave Passage Effects of a Frame Structure

Effect of wave passage is usually neglected and uniform excitation is used directly when study the earthquake responses of short span structures. In this paper, a three-span, five-storey reinforced concrete plane frame structure which is coming from actual building is used to study whether or not the wave passage effects can always be neglected in researching the earthquake responses of short span structures. The Large Mass Method (LMM) is used to realize wave passage excitation in large general finite element software ANSYS. Six earthquake acceleration records of site class III are chosen from PEER Ground Motion Database and used for time history analysis. The column shear forces and beam-end bending moments of the structure subjected to wave passage excitation and uniform excitation are compared. The numerical results showed that the column shear forces and beam-end bending moments obtained from the wave passage excitation increase remarkably comparing with the results of uniform excitation. It demonstrated that the wave passage effects should not be neglected in the earthquake response analyses even for frame structures.