Seismic demands of structural and non-structural components in self-centering precast concrete wall buildings

Self-centering (SC) precast concrete wall structures have been developed as an earthquake resilient structural system characterized by low structural damage and controllable residual drift. Despite the superior structural performance, harmonizing to seismic performance between structural and non-structural components is expected to be considered for further comprehensive performance assessment. This paper extensively evaluates the seismic demands of structural and non-structural components, especially for those sensitive to accelerations in SC precast concrete wall structures. Factors considered include building heights, earthquake ground motion types and intensities, energy dissipation, as well as base rocking, and impact against the foundation. The seismic demands of SC precast concrete walls are firstly compared with conventional reinforced concrete (RC) walls by nonlinear time history analysis (NTHA) in terms of displacement and acceleration responses. Then, attention is focused on investigating the dominant factors for the seismic demands of acceleration-sensitive non-structural components in SC precast wall structures through floor response spectrum analysis and parametric analyses. The results confirm that the SC precast walls exhibit excellent lateral response, especially with limited residual drifts. However, for the floor acceleration response, which is highly related to the demands of non-structural components, the results show that higher modes have a critical influence on SC precast wall structures. It also indicates that the floor acceleration response of SC precast wall structures is strongly influenced by the location of the story levels but not strongly influenced by the base rocking impact and energy dissipation capability.