Effect of depth of soil stratum on performance of buildings for site-specific earthquakes

Towards formulating guidelines for performance evaluation of buildings to site-specific earthquakes, studies are reported in literature on the effect of various critical parameters. No study is, however, reported on the effect of depth of soil stratum. In this paper, a methodology is proposed and applied for performance evaluation of buildings for site-specific earthquakes including depth of soil stratum as a parameter. The methodology integrates independent procedures meant for performance evaluation of buildings and site-specific seismic analysis. Application of the proposed methodology enables to determine performance point of a building in terms of inelastic displacement and base shear. Numerical application of the methodology is demonstrated using the particulars of Delhi region. Two typical RC buildings (B1 and B2) with significantly different inelastic behaviour, assumed to be located on soil depths ranging from 10 to 200 m are chosen for the application study. Capacity spectra of the buildings are generated from nonlinear static analysis. Studies indicate that for building B1, with elasto-plastic behaviour, the depth of soil stratum strongly influences demand on inelastic displacement compared to that on inelastic base shear. For building B2, with continuously varying inelastic behaviour, the depth of soil stratum is observed to have significant influence on both the inelastic base shear as well as inelastic displacement. Responses of the buildings are compared with that obtained based on design spectrum of Indian seismic code. For both the cases, inelastic displacements as well as inelastic base shears are underestimated by Indian seismic code for certain depths of soil stratum. Proposed methodology enables the calculation of realistic values of inelastic base shear and corresponding displacement of a building for site-specific earthquakes by considering the actual characteristics of soil stratum.