Earthquake-Induced Floor Accelerations in Base-Rocking Wall Buildings

Abstract

ABSTRACT Base-rocking walls represent effective lateral load-resisting systems that are capable of achieving high seismic performance. However, while reliable design procedures have been proposed for these structural systems, little to no attention has been dedicated to the integrity of the attached non-structural elements (NSEs). It is evident that desired seismic performance can only be achieved if both structural and non-structural elements are properly designed and built. In order to take a step toward the formation of accurate but simplified methods of quantifying non-structural demands in rocking systems, this work examines the floor spectra on elastic and inelastic case-study structures subject to input ground motions of varying intensity. After identifying the factors that appear to affect the acceleration demands on NSEs, this paper proposes two preliminary simplified methodologies to estimate floor spectra in base-rocking wall buildings. The procedures are tested numerically by comparing predictions with floor spectra obtained from time-history analyses of rocking wall structures of 4- to 12-storys in height. The results demonstrate that both methods perform well. Further validation, extension and optimization of the methods should be performed as part of future research.