POUNDING PROBLEMS IN URBAN AREAS

Abstract

Buildings in urban areas and metropolitan cities are constructed very close to each other. This is because of the requirement of functional usage and high land value. Because of the insufficient gap between the adjacent buildings or adjacent units of the same buildings, they are most vulnerable for seismic damage like pounding. The adjacent land generally belongs to different land owners, where they construct the buildings for different requirements (residential, public). This leads to different dynamic properties of the adjacent buildings. During the earthquakes these may vibrate in or out-of-phase leading to damages, varying from slight architectural damages to severe structural damages. In this paper the pounding analysis is done for different cases of different building positions like buildings of same height and same floor level to buildings in row, are analyzed using SAP (2000) software package. When the two buildings are placed at different floor levels the impact force is more than buildings with the same floor levels. Also when buildings are in a row exterior building suffers more pounding damage than the interior building.