The Effect of the Mainshock–Aftershock on the Estimation of the Separation Gap of Regular and Irregular Adjacent Structures with the Soft Story

Abstract

One way for decreasing the effect of pounding is to set the separation gap between two adjacent buildings. On the one hand, earthquakes in earthquake-prone zones often occur as a chain of successive earth movements in the form of foreshock, mainshock and aftershock. On the other hand, the existence of soft story in the lowest story of the structure is the most common type of irregularity in lateral stiffness. This paper investigates the effect of seismic sequences to estimate the separation gap at the highest collision level of two adjacent structures. For this purpose, 335 adjacent combinations of regular and irregular steel moment-resisting frames are evaluated which have a soft story on the first story. Separation gap demand is calculated using dynamic analysis of nonlinear time history under a set of seismic sequences which are a combination of the mainshock and aftershock. Results of the total of analysis done show the seismic sequence effects are significant and should be considered in the process of determining the normal separation gap (here after, NSG). Finally, based on the done studies, an empirical relationship is presented to estimate the seismic sequence effects on separation gap of two regular and irregular adjacent structures.