Calculating the Destruction of Multistory Buildings by the Grid-Characteristic Method

Abstract

Nowadays, many objects are exposed to the risks of seismic activity, either of a natural character during earthquakes or due to man-made hazards. For example, the zone of increased seismic activity includes the eastern regions of Russia located in the zone of the so-called Ring of Fire, the coastal zone of the continents of Eurasia, North America, South America, and Australia, as well as the islands surrounding the Pacific Ocean. Taking into account the development of high-performance computing systems, the investigations into the possibilities of using more precise methods for calculating the seismic resistance of structures to natural and man-made impacts is an urgent fundamental scientific problem, which this study aims to address. The relevant calculations are performed by the grid-characteristic method. Thereby wave fields of the velocity vector and the Cauchy stress tensor were computed. The failure areas of multistory concrete buildings are calculated using the destruction criterion of the main stress. The destroyed areas are subsequently considered as free boundaries within the integration domain. In this study various types of specifications of the initial seismic impact are considered. They are also compared in terms of their impact on the localization of failure areas and the consumption of computing resources. A comparison of the localization of the calculated failure areas of multistory buildings with a decrease in the coordinate step of the computational grid and the time integration step is also performed. We also analyze the dependence of the localization of the calculated failure areas contingent upon the type of specified seismic impact, the type of seismic wave, and the number of floors in the building. The data on the consumption of computational resources for various formulations of problems, including random access memory, hard disk memory, and computation time, are presented.