Title: The response of tall buildings to far-field earthquakes and the case of a 49-storey steel building

Authors: Sifat Muin; Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl; Cem Topkaya

Addresses: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720-1710, USA ' Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720-1710, USA ' Department of Civil Engineering, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey

Abstract: This paper investigates the seismic response of an instrumented 49-storey steel structure in San Francisco to weak, far-field, and strong, near-field ground motions. The instrumentation records obtained during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake are used to verify the accuracy of the predictions of the time-history analysis of the model. The ChiChi-002 ground motion record from the 1992 Chi-Chi earthquake in Taiwan (PGA = 0.08 g), representing a 'weak, far-field' earthquake and the record from the 1994 Northridge-Newhall earthquake (PGA = 0.60 g) representing a 'strong, near-field' earthquake were used in the study. The results showed that the force, acceleration, and displacement responses of this long-period structure to the 'weak far-field' ground motion are much larger than its response to the 'strong, near-field' ground motion. Also, the response attenuates at a slower rate for the weak, far-field earthquake, indicating the possibility of greater damage, both to structural and non-structural elements, during the earthquake. Interim seismic design recommendations are formulated to address this issue in the design of tall buildings with long periods.

Keywords: structural engineering; earthquake engineering; nonlinear time-history analysis; instrumented buildings; far-field earthquakes; seismic design; tall buildings; near-field earthquakes; dynamic resonance; long-period motion; seismic performance; drift control; seismic response.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEIE.2020.105378

International Journal of Earthquake and Impact Engineering, 2020 Vol.3 No.1, pp.15 - 39

Accepted: 18 Jun 2019
Published online: 26 Feb 2020 *