Earthquake-Induced Pounding of Medium-to-High-Rise Base-Isolated Buildings

During earthquakes, out-of-phase vibrations in adjacent buildings with limited distance may cause pounding between them. In recent years, the use of seismic isolation has expanded considerably as an effective approach to reduce seismic damage. However, the isolated building experiences large displacements during earthquakes, and there is a possibility of collisions with adjacent structures. The research on earthquake-induced pounding of base-isolated buildings has been mainly focused on interactions between low structures. In this paper, the influence of structural pounding on the response of medium-to-high-rise base-isolated buildings is investigated under different ground motions. The analysis has been focused on collisions between two insufficiently separated five-story and eight-story base-isolated and fixed base buildings aligned in three different configurations. The results of the study indicate that structural pounding may significantly increase the response of medium-to-high-rise base-isolated buildings during earthquakes. Moreover, substantial dependence of the structural behavior on the gap size between structures has been observed. The general trend shows the reduction in the pounding-involved response with the increase in the gap size value. The results indicate that the increase in the response of the base-isolated building is larger when the height of the structure is bigger. They also show that larger amplifications of peak accelerations of the upper stories can be expected due to collisions. On the other hand, the amplifications of the story shears have not shown any specific trend for different stories of the analyzed base-isolated building.