Seismic Design Considerations for Architectural Design Aspects

Architectural design decisions play an important role in the earthquake behavior of buildings. However, architects are very unfamiliar with earthquake response concept. Earthquake resistant design (ERD) initiates generally during the architectural design stage to adhere to these principles. This study was focused on plan geometries, architectural design and structural system configurations for structural earthquake responses. A general-purpose finite element program was used to evaluate several irregularities and their corresponding earthquake responses. In the first phase of the study, the projections in plan view and projection ratios were compared from a torsional response perspective. In the second phase, nonparallel axes are investigated. In the last phase, the effects of shear wall arrangement on torsional irregularity response were analysed by considering 4 different configurations in a school building failure during the recent earthquake (2011) in the city, Van located in the east of Turkey. The number of storys was chosen as a parameter for the latter phase. The mode superposition method was preferred for the linear dynamic analyses. According to the results of the study, the torsional rotation was found to be proportional to the projection ratio in plan. For non-orthogonal cases, structure with an inclined axis more than 30 degrees, torsional irregularity factor exceeded the code-defined limit. Beneficial observations and conclusions were drawn for both architects and structural engineers' perspective.