Rational Use of Idealized Shear-Building Models to Approximate Actual Buildings

Zhanxuan Zuo,Shuang Li,Yiting He

doi:10.3390/buildings12030273

Abstract

The paper aims to investigate the accuracies of idealization methods of the well-known shear-building models. Five idealization methods are adopted to idealize the structural story capacity curve within the range from zero to the deformation corresponding to the peak shear point. After the peak shear point, a skew branch followed by a constant branch are used to approximate the capacity curve. The five idealization methods are verified by using four reinforcement concrete (RC) frames with 3, 8, 12, and 18 stories. Results reveal that all the five idealization methods may cause remarkable errors in prediction of the period, displacements and accelerations of the actual buildings. The errors of the structural period by the five idealization methods are almost above 10–40%. The errors of the structural displacements and accelerations by the five idealization methods are almost above 30–90%. For all the five idealization methods, the prediction accuracy on displacement and acceleration will be dramatically increased if the comparison is only focused on the maximum value within all story rather than the maximum values of each story. The initial stiffness method provides the best predictions on periods of the actual buildings. The farthest point method provides better prediction than the other four idealization methods.

Highlights

IntroductionConsidering the wide availability of powerful computational tools and software, it is possible to use more complex models (e.g., the beam-column element models or solid element models) to perform analyses for obtaining the structural seismic responses.if providing structural responses only at the “story” level is the target, the use of simplified modeling assumptions such as the shear-building concept is necessary and convenience in these cases
Alongside the seismic response analyses on ordinary multi-story buildings, the idealizations of actual buildings to the shear-building model have been used in many research aspects, e.g., soil-structure-interaction analysis [2–4], pounding analysis [5], health monitoring and system identification [6–10], damper placements [11], isolated buildings [12,13], structural optimum design [14–17], pushover analysis [18,19], and city earthquake response analysis [20–23], etc
In shear-building models, springs floor slabs areonly modeled as lumped masses and columns aredirecare modeled as elastic–plastic that exhibit deformations in horizontal modeled as elastic–plastic springs thatThe only exhibit deformations horizontal direction tion when subjected to lateral forces

Summary

Introduction

Considering the wide availability of powerful computational tools and software, it is possible to use more complex models (e.g., the beam-column element models or solid element models) to perform analyses for obtaining the structural seismic responses.if providing structural responses only at the “story” level is the target, the use of simplified modeling assumptions such as the shear-building concept is necessary and convenience in these cases. Alongside the seismic response analyses on ordinary multi-story buildings, the idealizations of actual buildings to the shear-building model have been used in many research aspects, e.g., soil-structure-interaction analysis [2–4], pounding analysis [5], health monitoring and system identification [6–10], damper placements [11], isolated buildings [12,13], structural optimum design [14–17], pushover analysis [18,19], and city earthquake response analysis [20–23], etc. This type of model is the basis of methods or regulations in some seismic design codes, e.g., the derivation of the vertical distribution. The above how accurate are the obtained byof using models?

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Results

Conclusion