Alternative solution for kinematic interaction problem of soil–structure systems with embedded foundation

Abstract

SUMMARYAn effective procedure to incorporate kinematic interaction (KI) aspects in seismic analysis of soil–structures systems was presented. In this regard, first, the effect of KI on the structural response was investigated with special focus on the role of rocking component of foundation input motion (FIM). This was performed parametrically for a wide range of selected nondimensional parameters, which well define the introduced simplified soil–structure model. It was observed that ignoring the effect of rocking input motion may introduce errors, which can be on the unsafe side especially for slender structures with large embedment ratios. On the other hand, it was known that introducing the rocking input motion makes the problem too complicated to be addressed by simplified guidelines suitable for seismic codes or practicing engineers. As an alternative solution, a modified translational input motion was introduced, which can replace both translational and rotational components of FIM. This modified input motion, which was referred to as the net horizontal (NH) FIM in this article, was generated such that the roof displacement of the soil–structure system to this motion is identical to that of the same model subject to the multicomponent FIM resulted by KI. The applicability of the proposed procedure was then examined for a wide range of soil–structure systems subjected to a couple of real ground motions. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.