Investigating seismic behavior in adjacent structures: A study on the impact of structures embedment level and existence of dead loads considering soil-structure interaction

The aim of this paper is to give a comprehensive awareness of some substantial factors including the influences of the embedment level of a building and the presence of dead loading which affect the structure-soil-structure interaction (SSSI) of nearby buildings that were not investigated thoroughly in the preceding studies related to seismic analysis and design, and earthquakes hazards assessment. In order to achieve this goal, two dynamic tests will be implemented on two novel small scale multi-degree of freedom nearby steel models of six stories by a shaking table system with the consideration of soil participation in these tests; the first test includes examining the effect of several levels of embedment of one of the adjacent buildings, the second test includes examining the effect of the presence of dead loading for different situations. Test results indicated that these factors have critical impacts on the SSSI response. It is evident that the increase in embedment level led to mitigate the impact of the earthquake wave on the seismic response of the examined structure while the results of the dead loading conditions had some positive and negative aspects on the seismic responses of the tested structure. Regarding the foundation rotation and soil pressure responses, the outcomes also displayed an equivalent tendency to the previous two responses which included that as soon as the embedment level of the examined building maximized, these responses got minimized as well. The reduction was 13.1%, and 21.3% for the one-story embedment, and two-story embedment.