Evaluation of FEMA-440 for including soil-structure interaction

Abstract

Replacing the entire soil-structure system with a fixed base oscillator to consider the effect of soil-structure interaction (SSI) is a common analysis method in seismic design. This technique has been included in design procedures such as NEHRP, ASCE, etc. by defining an equivalent fundamental period and damping ratio that can modify the response of the structure. However, recent studies indicate that the effects of SSI should be reconsidered when a structure undergoes a nonlinear displacement demand. In recent documents on Nonlinear Static Procedures (NSPs), FEMA-440 (2005), a modified damping ratio of the replacement oscillator was proposed by introducing the ductility of the soil-structure system obtained from pushover analysis. In this paper, the damping defined in FEMA-440 to include the soil-structure interaction effect is evaluated, and the accuracy of the Coefficient Method given in FEMA-440 and the Equivalent Linearization Method is studied. Although the improvements for Nonlinear Static Procedures (NSPs) in FEMA-440 are achieved for a fixed base SDOF structure, the soil effects are not perfectly obtained. Furthermore, the damping definition of a soil-structure system is extended to structures to consider bilinear behavior.