Advances and Trends in Structural Engineering, Mechanics and Computation Zingoni (Ed.

.) 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-0-415-58472-2

3D time history analysis of RC structures versus common methods with attention to the modeling of floor slabs and near versus far-fault earthquakes
A. Mortezaei & H.R. Ronagh
School of Civil Engineering, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

ABSTRACT: Commercial softwares such as ETABS and SAP, commonly used for the analysis of apartment buildings, assume the slabs as a rigid or semi-rigid membrane and only roughly allow for the slabs flexural stiffness using the concept of effective width. These assumptions when further simplified adopting a 2D frame method that ignores the torsional effects may produce results that are very different to the full 3D finite element modeling in particular when time-history nonlinear dynamic behavior is sought.The errors could be larger in nearfault earthquakes that often excite higher vibration modes. Recent major earthquakes (Northridge 1994, Kobe 1995, Chi-chi 1999 and Bam 2003, etc.) have shown that many near-fault ground motions possess prominent acceleration pulses that result in different structural responses for common medium to high-rise buildings. Incorrect incorporation of the flexural stiffness of slabs can in some cases underestimate the lateral stiffness. It is shown in the current paper that in a wall-frame structure subjected to near-fault earthquakes, the full 3D time history modeling can significantly vary the analysis results and as such is an important consideration in design.

INTRODUCTION

A challenging research topic in engineering seismology and earthquake engineering is the characterization of near-fault seismic motions and their effects on the performance of special structures, such as tall building. The problem under consideration is twofold: the first aspect of the problem is related to the physical understanding, modeling and simulation of near-fault ground motions, while the second one is associated to the characteristics of the structure itself that control its behavior under near-fault excitations. While there is a good understanding of the first aspect of the problem, there are still uncertainties and difficulties in understanding, describing and predicting the near-fault earthquakes. Following the 1994 Northridge and the 1995 Kobe earthquakes, near-fault pulse-type ground motion has attracted the interest of earthquake engineers. These events are characterized by the occurrence of the earthquake under a heavily urbanized area or very close to it. The earthquake ground motion in the region within 15 to 20 km of the fault is characterized by large amplitude pulse with low frequency in both the velocity and displacement time histories. These pulses represent high input energy to the structure and results in different structural response than that due to far-fault earthquakes. Ground motions with high velocity pulses were not included in the development of current design methodologies. In earthquake engineering practice, the severity of the ground motion is often measured

by the peak ground acceleration (PGA) while for the near-fault records this is not always the case. The acceleration record in the near-fault may contain high PGA value that corresponds to a short duration pulse with little or no effect on the structure. On the other hand, a low PGA with long duration pulse may have severe damaging effects on civil engineering structures. In the near-fault, the propagation of the fault rupture toward a site at a velocity very close to the shear wave velocity makes most of the seismic energy from the rupturing process arrive in single large pulse of motion. Recently, many high-rise apartment buildings using the wall-frame system have been constructed. The wall-frame system, which consists of reinforced concrete columns, beams, walls and slabs, is very popular particularly in the Middle East because it allows a more flexible plan layout without columns. Analysis softwares such as ETABS, commonly used for the analysis of high-rise apartment buildings, has adopted the rigid diaphragm assumption for the slab of a whole floor (Wilson & Habibullah 2007). In this case, the flexural stiffness of slabs is usually ignored in the analysis. If the flexural stiffness of slabs in the wall-frame system is totally ignored, the lateral stiffness of the structures may be significantly underestimated (Lee & Kim 2000). The underestimation of the stiffness will lead to longer natural periods that may result in the underestimation of the seismic loads. Under large lateral movements of a building, cracks may occur in slabs along the interface with columns and shear walls. The cracks cause a large reduction in the flexural stiffness

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Figure 2. Bam (Iran) ground motion; (Top) acceleration time history; (Bottom) velocity time history.

type B is a wall-frame system structure with shear walls. In conventional analyses commonly utilsed in commercial software such as the ETABS, the floor slab is usually modeled with a rigid diaphragm that represents each floor by three degrees of freedom. To include the effects of the floor slabs in the analysis, the slabs are to be modeled by subdividing the slabs into many shell elements.To show the floor slab effect more clearly, the gross section is used for the calculation of the slab stiffness. The yield strength of the longitudinal steel bars and stirrups are fsy = 400 MPa and fsy = 300 MPa, respectively. The average compressive strength of the concrete is 25 MPa.
Figure 1. Example structures; (a) Plan type A, (b) Plan type B.

2.2 Input near- and far-fault ground motions To obtain the dynamic response of the structure, four different types of earthquakes, El-Centro, Bam, Tabas and Manjil, with a maximum input acceleration of 0.35 g are applied. These sets of earthquake records are chosen in order to investigate the nonlinear structural response to an excitation with different frequency content and duration. Recorded during the 2003 Bam Iran earthquake, the Bam station was approximately 8 km from the fault and considered as a near-fault earthquake (Ghayamghamian & Hisada 2007). The fault normal component of the Bam ground motion acceleration and velocity history are shown in Figure 2. As can be seen in the figure, the Bam ground motion showed a clear and distinguished forward directivity pulse.Therefore, Bam record data is used as input nearfault ground motions as well as Tabas for dynamic analysis. 3 SEISMIC RESPONSE OF DIFFERENT BUILDING SYSTEM

of slabs. For accurate results, appropriate cracked section properties should be included based on the actual behavior of a building. This paper presents results of an analytical study performed on the effects of floor slabs on the seismic behavior of wall-frame systems under near-fault and far-fault earthquakes. Nonlinear dynamic analysis is conducted in order to investigate global behavior such as load-deformation relationship on wall-frame systems. For FE modeling, an analysis tool which is based on layered nonlinear finite element method to investigate the nonlinear behavior of wall-frame structure has been used (Mortezaei 2009). 2 DESCRIPTION OF BUILDINGS AND GROUND MOTION DATABASE

2.1 Specimens and material properties Two different plans, as shown in Figure 1, were used to investigate the influence of the flexural stiffness of slabs. Plan type A is a typical framed structure. Plan

The equivalent static analysis and time history analysis were performed with the framed structures and the

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Figure 3. Displacements of 14-story structures; (Top) Plan type A, (Bottom) Plan type B.

Figure 4. Displacements of 19-story structures; (Top) Plan type A, (Bottom) Plan type B.

wall-frame system structures to investigate the effect of floor slabs on seismic response. In these analyses, two models were used for each plan type. Model R uses rigid diaphragms (conventional procedure) not including the flexural stiffness of slabs, while model S is using the flexural stiffness of slabs. Two plan types were analyzed with 14-story and 19-story structures. 3.1 Lateral displacements Lateral displacements from the nonlinear dynamic analysis of buildings subjected to near-fault earthquakes (Tabas and Bam) are plotted in Figure 3 and in Figure 4 for 14-story and 19-story structures respectively. Because of the paper size limitation, the results for far-fault records are not plotted here. In all cases, the lateral displacements are reduced when the flexural stiffness of slabs is included in the analysis. In the framed structures, the effects of the floor slabs are similar for 14-story and 19-story structures as illustrated in Figure 3 and Figure 4. The effects are more significant, however, in the 19-story wall-frame system structures. The roof displacement of the 19-story framed structure with plan type A was reduced by 24% when the flexural stiffness of slabs is considered. The roof displacements of wall-frame system structures were reduced, however, by 67% with plan type B. Comparing the results of near-fault and far-fault records shows that the effects of floor slabs are more significant in near-fault records The roof displacement of 19-story framed structure with plan type B subjected to near-fault records was

reduced by 37% when the flexural stiffness of slabs is considered. 3.2 Natural periods of vibration Natural periods of vibration for 14-story structures are shown in Figure 5. They show that in all cases the natural period is shorter when the flexural stiffness of the slab is included. The floor slab effects are more noticeable in taller wall-frame system structures. The differences in natural periods are more significant in the first mode which is the most important mode for the seismic response of a structure. In the comparison between different plan types, similar observations are made as to those in the lateral displacements. The different natural periods result in different seismic responses of the structures. In the design of example structures, the soil type, seismic zone, importance factor and response modification factor were assumed to be type 2, high seismicity, 1.0 and 7 respectively. Model R has longer natural periods and thus lower spectral accelerations than those of model S. Therefore, if the flexural stiffness of the floor slab is ignored, the seismic loads scaled to the code base shear could be underestimated. Even though the difference in the periods is small, the difference in the spectral acceleration becomes large in the shorter period region, because the slope of the response spectrum is steep in that region. As listed in Table 1, the base shears of model R are less than those of model S. Therefore, in order to obtain more accurate results, it is important to

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were investigated in this study. The major observations and findings are summarized as follows: 1. In a wall-frame system structure, the effect of the flexural stiffness of slabs on the lateral response of the structure is relatively significant, especially in taller buildings. If the flexural stiffness of the slabs is totally ignored, the lateral displacements may be overestimated and the seismic loads per the building code base shear may be significantly underestimated. It is recommended that the flexural stiffness of slabs is included in the analysis of wall-frame system structures. 2. It may be important to determine how much of the flexural stiffness of slabs should be included in the analysis of a wall-frame system structure, since the amount depends on the lateral response of a building. Future studies can focus on finding the modes of slab deformation in a wall-frame system structure under lateral loads. In conjunction with the flexural stiffness of slabs, it may be necessary to consider the out-of-plane flexural stiffness of the shear wall, which might cause a considerable bending moment requiring additional reinforcement in the wall. 3. The slab should be subdivided into a large number of shell elements in order to include the flexural stiffness of slabs, while a shear wall may be more efficiently modeled with only one element per story. REFERENCES
Table 1. Base shear calculated from response spectrum (unit: kN). A Plan Type Model 14-Story 19-Story R 201 251 S 215 259 B R 375 417 S 393 469 Ghayamghamian MR and Hisada Y. 2007. Near Fault Strong Motion Complexity of the 2003 Bam Earthquake (Iran) and Low Frequency Ground Motion Simulation. Geophysical Journal International, 170(2), 679686. Lee DG, Kim HS. 2000. The effect of the floor slabs on the seismic response of multi-story building structures. Proceedings of APSEC2000, Sep; Malaysia. Mortezaei A. 2009. A program for three-dimensional nonlinear dynamic analysis of reinforced concrete buildings, School of Civil Engineering, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland. Wilson EL and Habibullah A. 2007. ETABS three dimensional analysis of building systems users manual, Computers & Structures Inc, Berkeley (CA).

Figure 5. Natural periods of vibration for 14-story structures; (Top) Plan type A, (Bottom) Plan type B.

include the flexural stiffness of slabs adequately based on the actual behavior of a building. 4 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

The effects of floor slabs on seismic response of medium and high-rise apartment building structures

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