Summary The present work investigates the influence of small geometrical defects on the behavior of slender rigid blocks. A comprehensive experimental campaign was carried out on one of the shake tables of CEA/Saclay in France. The tested model was a massive steel block with standard manufacturing quality. Release, free oscillations tests as well as shake table tests revealed a non‐negligible out‐of‐plane motion even in the case of apparently plane initial conditions or excitations. This motion exhibits a highly reproducible part for a short duration that was used to calibrate a numerical geometrically asymmetrical model. The stability of this model when subjected to 2000 artificial seismic horizontal bidirectional signals was compared with the stability of a symmetrical one. This study showed that the geometrical imperfections slightly increase the rocking and overturning probabilities for earthquake signals in a narrow range of peak ground acceleration. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In this paper the influence of the nonlinear behaviour of the primary structure on floor spectra is investigated by means of simple models. The general trends of floor spectra for different types of nonlinear behaviour of one degree of freedom (1DOF) primary structure are shown and we point out their common futures and their differences. A special attention is given to the cases of elastoplastic and nonlinear elastic behaviours and methods to determine an equivalent linear oscillator are proposed. The properties (frequency and damping) of this equivalent linear oscillator are quite different from the properties of equivalent linear oscillators commonly considered in practice. In particular, in the case of elastoplastic behaviour, there is no frequency shift and damping is smaller than assumed by other methods commonly used. In the case of nonlinear elastic behaviour, the concept of an equivalent frequency which is a random variable is used. Finally, a design floor spectrum of primary structures, exhibiting energy dissipating nonlinear behaviour is proposed.

No abstract