Investigation of beneficial and detrimental effects of soil-foundation-structure interaction on the seismic response of shear buildings

Abstract

The frequency content of earthquake ground motions shows the different influences on the performance of the structural response while the Soil-Foundation-Structure Interaction (SFSI) is considered. In this study, the periods with crucial effects on the response of a structure are quantitatively detected by considering the wavelet energy spectrum. The effects of SFSI under plane-strain conditions are studied using the substructure approach for the structural frames supported by rigid foundations embedded into a homogeneous, isotropic and elastic half-space. The effective-mass formulation is developed for the system with and without considering SFSI. Three ranges of periods on the energy spectrum of the response ratio are identified. The proposed ranges of periods on the energy spectrum and the band of possible predominant periods of free-field motion illustrate the beneficial or the detrimental effects of Soil-Foundation-Structure (SFS) system by determining the ratio of base-shear or structural inter-story drifts for flexible base structure and fixed base structure cases. © 2014 Korean Society of Civil Engineers and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg