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A study on the seismic behaviour of 52-storey steel frame building Ding, Yuming

Abstract

Comparison of recorded structural earthquake response and theoretical dynamic analysis is vital to the study of earthquake engineering nowadays. This comparison could be either in the frequency domain by utilizing system identification algorithms or in the time domain by comparing response time histories. Not only had seldom previous studies done this comparison, but also less attention was paid to the three-dimensional nonlinear dynamic behaviour despite the fact that it has been generally admitted that three-dimensional response is important in inelastic behavior of buildings. The purpose of this research is to study the seismic behaviour of a well-instrumented 52-storey steel frame building in Los Angeles, California. This building has been subjected to ground motions from several earthquakes among which the 1991 Sierra Madre earthquake and the 1994 Northridge earthquake were selected in this study. During both earthquakes the building responses appeared to remain in the linear range. Detailed frequency domain analyses of the recorded motions from these two earthquakes were conducted to determine the dynamic characteristics of the structure. Three-dimensional nonlinear dynamic computer analyses were then employed to evaluate the response of the structure induced by other earthquake excitations. Dynamic characteristics and seismic responses from the above two approaches hence could be compared to yield valuable information. The results of this study showed that by performing a linear three-dimensional analysis, the actual response of a building during past earthquakes could be reproduced with confidence. By further performing a nonlinear three-dimensional analysis, the state and sequence of damage could also be predicted. Traditional Nonlinear Static Procedure (NSP, pushover analysis) has the deficiency of excluding the higher mode participation which becomes obvious for highrise buildings. Improvements to the NSP were explored. Because of the torsional response for highrise buildings, two-dimensional analysis is not feasible to reliably predict their nonlinear response during earthquakes.

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