Seismic performance of a building base-isolated by TFP to with a moat wall

Abstract

Limiting the displacement of seismic isolators causes a pounding phenomenon under severe earthquakes. Therefore, the ASCE 7-16 has provided minimum criteria for the design of the isolated building. In this research the seismic response of isolated buildings by Triple Friction Pendulum Isolator (TFPI) under the impact, expected, and unexpected mass eccentricity was evaluated. Also, the effect of different design parameters on the seismic behavior of structural and non-structural elements was found. For this, a special steel moment frame structure with a surrounding moat wall was designed according to the criteria, by considering different response modification coefficients (RI), and 20% mass eccentricity in one direction. Then, different values of these parameters and the damping of the base isolation were evaluated. The results show that the structural elements have acceptable behavior after impact, but the nonstructural components are placed in a moderate damage range after impact and the used improved methods could not ameliorate the level of damage. The reduction in the RI and the enhancement of the isolator's damping are beneficial up to a certain point for improving the seismic response after impact. The moat wall reduces torque and maximum absolute acceleration (MAA) due to unexpected enhancement of mass eccentricity. However, drifts of some stories increase. Also, the difference between the response of story drift by expected and unexpected mass eccentricity is less. This indicates that the minimum requirement displacement according to ASCE 7-16 criteria lead to acceptable results under the unexpected enhancement of mass eccentricity.