Abstract
Several municipal seismic vulnerability investigations have been identified pounding of adjacent structures as one of the main hazards due to the constrained separation distance between adjacent buildings. Consequently, an assessment of the seismic pounding risk of buildings is superficial in future adjustment of design code provisions for buildings. The seismic lateral oscillation of adjacent buildings with eccentric alignment is partly restrained, and therefore a torsional response demand is induced in the building under earthquake excitation due to eccentric pounding. In this paper, the influence of the eccentric seismic pounding on the design demands for adjacent symmetric buildings with eccentric alignment is presented. A mathematical simulation is formulated to evaluate the eccentric pounding effects on the seismic design demands of adjacent buildings, where the seismic response analysis of adjacent buildings in series during collisions is investigated for various design parameters that include number of stories; in-plan alignment configurations, and then compared with that for no-pounding case. According to the herein outcomes, the effects of seismic pounding severity is mainly depending on characteristics of vibrations of the adjacent buildings and on the characteristics of input ground motions as well. The position of the building wherever exterior or interior alignment also, influences the seismic pounding severity as the effect of exposed direction from one or two sides. The response of acceleration and the shear force demands appear to be greater in case of adjacent buildings as seismic pounding at different levels of stories, than that in case of no-pounding buildings. The results confirm that torsional oscillations due to eccentric pounding play a significant role in the overall pounding-involved response of symmetric buildings under earthquake excitation due to horizontal eccentric alignment.