Soil–structure interaction effects observed in the in situ forced vibration and pushover tests of school buildings in Taiwan and their modeling considering the foundation flexibility

Abstract

In the conventional structural seismic analysis, the rigid base model is usually adopted without considering the flexibility of the ground, leading to inaccurate estimation of the vibration characteristics and the seismic response of the structure. In 2007, several in situ tests were conducted by the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering (NCREE) on the school buildings in the Guanmiao Elementary School in Tainan, Taiwan. For the study of soil–structure interaction (SSI) effects, the forced vibration test (FVT) was performed, and the deformation of the foundation system was measured during the pushover test. In this paper, the results of these in situ tests are presented and discussed, and the finite element models of the school buildings were generated for the simulation of the FVT and for the pushover analysis in order to investigate the difference between the rigid base model and the flexible base model. Results show that the mechanical properties of the structure and the foundation could be demonstrated in these in situ tests. Additionally, the introduction of the flexibility of the foundation has a considerable influence on the results of structural analysis. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Influence of soil–structure interaction (structure-to-soil relative stiffness and mass ratio) on the fundamental period of buildings: experimental observation and analytical verification

“…Michel et al (2011) quantified and modeled the relative frequency decay and damping variation of low-rise modern masonry buildings in order to bring an analytical method to encompass the basic frequency, in which they argued that the SSI phenomenon should also be accounted for. After examining and comparing the experimental results obtained by forced-vibration tests and that by finite-element analyses on a school building in Taiwan, Ko and Chen (2009) found that the flexibility of foundation had a considerable impact on the results of structural analysis. Trifunac et al (2010) conducted a comprehensive study on the response of a 14-story reinforced concrete building in Srpska to 20-recorded earthquakes, and they found that essentially linear SSI was observed in these recorded data.…”

In situ experiment on retrofit of school buildings by adding sandwich columns to partition brick walls

“…Therefore, in order to realize the actual behavior of a typical school building subjected to lateral loading, a series of in situ tests were executed by the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering [17][18][19][20]. Therefore, in order to realize the actual behavior of a typical school building subjected to lateral loading, a series of in situ tests were executed by the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering [17][18][19][20].…”

“…In laboratory tests, the size of a school building specimen is limited, and neither the qualities of materials nor construction can be mirrored exactly. Therefore, in order to realize the actual behavior of a typical school building subjected to lateral loading, a series of in situ tests were executed by the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering [17][18][19][20]. Besides the tests of the building without retrofit [17][18][19], the benefits of some retrofit methods were verified, including the addition of reinforced concrete (RC) wing walls, enlarging columns [20], and adding sandwich columns.…”

Parameter Identification and Analysis of Shaking Table Tests on SSI System

“…Eduardo K. provided a concise review of some of the leading developments of SSI (Eduardo et al, 2010). In 2007, several in situ tests and corresponding simulations using the finite element method were conducted for school buildings in Taiwan (Ko et al, 2010).…”