Lateral and Base Shear Forces Acting on 20 Stories Building in Bujumbura City during the Seismic Activity

Abstract

For designing a high-rise building in Bujumbura city, it is very important to know that the city is located in the seismic zone and therefore take adequate conceptual measures. This study was inspired by a tendency to high-rise building in Bujumbura city while the designers of these buildings do not have sufficient data on the impact of seismic activity in the area lying in the extension of the Rift Valley. By referring to the International Building code (Berkeley 2003) and the ASCE7 data, it is easy to draw a response spectrum curve for Bujumbura city based on the short period ground motion range (To), the characteristic period of ground motion (Ts) and the spectral response acceleration Ss and S 1 . By using the Extended Three Dimensional Analysis of Building Systems (ETABS) software for the 20 stories building, the seismic base shear forces (V) can reach -2000KN and the seismic stories lateral forces (Fx) can reach 230 KN.