Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 22 (2002) 1175–1182

www.elsevier.com/locate/soildyn

Site effect on vulnerability of high-rise shear wall buildings

under near and far field earthquakes
Z.P. Wena, Y.X. Hua, K.T. Chaub,*
a
Institute of Geophysics, China Seismological Bureau, Beijing, People’s Republic of China
b
Department of Civil and Structural Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Yuk Choi Road, Hung Hom, Kowloon,
Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China

Abstract
Worldwide experience repeatedly shows that damages in structures caused by earthquakes are highly dependent on site condition and
epicentral distance. In this paper, a 21-storey shear wall-structure built in the 1960s in Hong Kong is selected as an example to investigate
these two effects. Under various design earthquake intensities and for various site conditions, the fragility curves or damage probability
matrix of such building is quantified in terms of the ductility factor, which is estimated from the ratio of storey yield shear to the inter-storey
seismic shear. For high-rise buildings, a higher probability of damage is obtained for a softer site condition, and damage is more severe for far
field earthquakes than for near field earthquakes. For earthquake intensity of VIII, the probability of complete collapse (P ) increases from 1
to 24% for near field earthquakes and from 1 to 41% for far field earthquakes if the building is moved form a rock site to a site consisting a
80 m thick soft clay. For intensity IX, P increases from 6 to 69% for near field earthquake and from 14 to 79% for far field earthquake if the
building is again moved form rock site to soft soil site. Therefore, site effect is very important and not to be neglected. Similar site and
epicentral effects should also be expected for other types of high-rise structures.
q 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Seismic vulnerability; Damage probability matrix; Site conditions; Epicentral distance; Distant earthquake; Near earthquake

1. Introduction In short, the fact that earthquakes caused extensive damage

It has been repeatedly demonstrated by many strong
earthquakes, including the 1906 San Francisco, the 1957
and 1985 Mexico City, the 1967 Caracas, the 1976
Tangshan, the 1989 Loma Prieta, the 1994 Northridge and
1995 Kobe earthquakes, that damages of buildings depend
strongly on the local site response. As early as 1906, during
the great San Francisco earthquake it was realized that
damage was more severe at downtown situated on a soft
ground than the surrounding areas [1]. The 1985 Mexico
City earthquake caused only moderate damages in the
vicinity of the Pacific coast of Mexico, but caused extensive
damages some 350 km away in Mexico City. Structural
damages in Mexico City were also highly selective. Large
parts of the city experienced no damage while areas
underlain by 38 – 50 m of soft soil suffered pronounced
damages [2]. During the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the
epicentral intensity is only VIII in the modified Mercalli
scale (MMI), while the intensity is IX in some soft site in
San Francisco, which locates more than 100 km away.
* Corresponding author. Fax: þ 852-2334-6389.
E-mail address: cektchau@polyu.edu.hk (K.T. Chau).
0267-7261/02/$ - see front matter q 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 2 6 7 - 7 2 6 1 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 1 4 5 - 8
in certain areas, and relatively little damage in others,
suggests that local site effects are important [2].
In addition, evidences from many earthquakes repeat-
edly illustrate that damage phenomenon in the near field
and far field are quite different. For example, the 1952
Kern earthquake caused heavier damages to one-storey or
two-storey brick buildings than to multi-storey buildings
in the epicentral areas, while caused heavier damages to
five or above multi-storey buildings than to low-rise
buildings in Los Angeles about 150 km away [3]. Thus,
the damages are highly selective in terms of both the
natural frequency of structures and the frequency content
of ground shaking.
Although effects of local site condition and epicentral
distance on building damage have been confirmed by many
earthquakes and have been investigated extensively [4 – 7],
these local site effects have not been incorporated into
vulnerability analysis of buildings through the use of
damage probability matrix (DPM) or fragility curves. To
incorporate the local site effects on the damages of existing
buildings, subjective expert opinions are often being used.
As remarked by Hu et al. [8], Medvedev [9] was perhaps the
first to summarize systematically the effect of site
1176 Z.P. Wen et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 22 (2002) 1175–1182
conditions on building damages. On the basis of field data,
including the shear wave velocity and the depth of water
table, he correlated structural damages to the site condition.
For the 1967 Caracas earthquake, Seed et al. [10] correlated
statistically different types of structural damages to the local
soil conditions. Kuribayashi et al. [11] related the
probability of damage of wooden houses during the 1948
Fukui earthquake to the local ground condition. Cochrane
and Schaad [12] presented a simple method to consider the
effect of soil condition on vulnerability of buildings by
either increasing or decreasing the design intensity. By
applying this method, Chavez [13] analyzed the effect of
local geology on the seismic vulnerability of the metropo-
litan zone of Guadalajara, Mexico. More recently, Murao
et al. [14] incorporated the site effects by using fragility
curves or DPM formulated based on the damage survey data
from the 1995 Kobe earthquake; and Mucciarelli et al. [15]
incorporated the site effects by using microtremor
measurements.
In reality, the local site condition and epicentral distance
may influence the magnitude as well as the frequency
content of strong ground motions. This paper attempts to
analyze the combined effects of the soil condition and
epicentral distance on the vulnerability of a typical
reinforced concrete frame/shear wall building in Hong
Kong by proposing the DPM for various conditions. More
specifically, we will use a multi-degree-of-freedom lump
mass system to represent a 21-storey reinforced concrete
building in Hong Kong. The shear force will be compared to
the yield shear to estimate the ductility, and subsequently
the damage states of the building.
Fig. 1. Design spectra of GBJ 11-89 for different site conditions at 5% damping. The natural periods of the site and the structure are denoted by Tg and T,
respectively, while the site categories I, II, III, and IV are denoted by SC I, SC II, SC III, and SC IV, respectively.
2. Formulation for damage probability matrix
2.1. Input ground motion
As mentioned in Section 1, the importance of site
condition and epicentral distance on local ground motions is
well recognized. In this study, however, no topography and
basin effect is incorporated. In addition, the effect of
duration of strong ground motion is not included. Instead,
we adopt the site- and earthquake-dependent design
response spectra of the Chinese seismic code GBJ 11-89
[16] as our seismic input. As shown in Fig. 1, the seismic
coefficient a is expressed in spectrum form, and depends on
the natural period of the site Tg and the site condition. The
site conditions can be classified into four categories, namely
SC I, SC II, SC III, and SC IV; and they correspond to a stiff
site, a medium-stiff site, a medium-soft site and a soft site.
The exact definitions are given in GBJ 11-89. Typically, SC
I is a rock site; SC II corresponds to a site with less than 9 m
thick of stiff soil with shear wave speed vs . 500 m/s; SC III
corresponds to a site with either a 3 –80 m thick of medium-
stiff soil with 500 m/s $ vs . 250 m/s or a medium-soft soil
(250 m/s $ vs . 140 m/s) of more than 80 m thick; and SC
IV corresponds to a site with a soft soil with vs # 140 m/s of
more than 80 m thick. The site fundamental period Tg can be
estimated from Table 1 as a function of site category as well
as whether the design earthquake is far field or near field,
ranging from 0.2 to 0.86 s. The maximum seismic
coefficient amax given in Fig. 1 depends on the design
level of earthquake intensity. The values of amax corre-
sponding to MMI VI, VII, VIII, IX and X can be taken as
0.12, 0.23, 0.45, 0.90 and 1.80, respectively.
 Z.P. Wen et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 22 (2002) 1175–1182 1177

Table 1 can be approximated by the following empirical formula

Characteristic period of the site Tg (s) in terms of site category (SC I, SC II, [17]:
SC III, and SC IV) and for both near and far field earthquakes (after GBJ
11-89) H2
T ¼ 0:33 þ 0:00069 p3 ffiffi ð3Þ
Epicentral distance Tg B

SC I SC II SC III SC IV where T is given in second, H and B are the height and

length along the shaking direction of the building (in m).
Near-earthquake 0.20 0.30 0.40 0.65
Far-earthquake 0.25 0.40 0.55 0.85 2.3. Yield shear coefficient of each storey

For frame structure with shear walls, the yield storey

2.2. Seismic storey shear
By applying the equivalent lateral force method, each
level of a building can be modeled by one lateral degree-of-
freedom along the shaking direction. The lateral force
applied at level i can be calculated from Ref. [16]:
GH
Fi ¼ X n i i aGeq ð1 2 dn Þ
GH
j¼1 j j
where Hi and Gi are the height and weight at level i,
respectively, n is the total number of stories of the building,
a is the spectrum parameter given in Fig. 1, dn is the
additional seismic action coefficient given in Fig. 2, and Geq
is the total equivalent weight of a structure (or 85% of the
total weight of the building). The coefficient dn is introduced
to account approximately for the higher mode contributions,
and such approach is essentially the same as those used in
the UBC-85 of the USA.
The shear force Qx at the x storey is then given by
summing all lateral seismic forces above that storey, i.e.
X
n Many studies show that, in the case of multi-storey frame
Qx ¼ Fi þ aGeq dn
i¼x
where Fi is given in Eq. (1).
In using Figs. 1 and 2, the fundamental period T of a
building is needed, and for RC frame/shear wall buildings T
shear can be estimated as [16]:
Qyx ¼ 0:25Fc Awx ð4Þ
where Fc is compressive strength of concrete and Awx is
sectional area of shear walls which are parallel to the
earthquake action in storey x. Note that this yield storey
shear will not be constant at different levels if the building is
ð1Þ
not uniform along the height. This formula is similar to
those adopted in Japan [18]. That is, the yield storey shear
should be independent of the frequency content of the
applied seismic forces, and the ultimate strength is assumed
proportional to the area of the shear wall aligned along the
direction of the seismic loads. The seismic resistant capacity
of a high-rise building can be estimated by a yield shear
coefficient of storey defined as:
Qyx
R¼ ð5Þ
Qx
where Qx is the seismic shear in the x storey given in Eq. (2)
and Qyx is yield shear of the same storey given in Eq. (4).
ð2Þ structure with shear walls, non-linear deformation will
concentrate at the weakest stories [19,20], which correspond
to the minimum R in Eq. (5). Note also that in the
calculation of Qx, the dynamic characteristics of the ground
motions have been taken into account, approximately. Thus,
the yield shear coefficient given in Eq. (5) relates not only
to the strength of the structure, but also to the characteristics
of the seismic input.

2.4. Probability density of the ductility factor

The maximum storey ductility factor is a key parameter

indicating building damage. The storey with minimum yield
shear coefficient experiences the maximum deformation and
attains the maximum ductility factor. Based upon 3120
cases of elastic – plastic seismic analyses of different types
of multi-degree-of-freedom structures subject to 31 real
seismic records, Yin et al. [21] proposed the following
formula for the maximum mean ductility m0 of a frame
structure with shear wall:
8 exp½2:6ð12RÞ
< pffi R#1
Fig. 2. A plot of the additional seismic action coefficient dn at the top level R
m0 ¼ ð6Þ
of the structure versus the structural period T. The natural period of the site : 1
is denoted by Tg. R R.1
1178 Z.P. Wen et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 22 (2002) 1175–1182
where R is the minimum yield storey shear coefficient
calculated from Eq. (5). This result for ductility factor is
comparable to the formula by Veletson and Newmark [22]
derived from the energy principle [23]. This empirical
formula can further be refined by adding correction factors
Ci ði ¼ 1; 2; …; 5Þ to the maximum mean ductility factor:
 X 
m ¼ m0 1 þ Ci ð7Þ
When sectional stiffness is non-uniform along the height,
C1 ¼ 0.2; when the plan of building is non-symmetric,
C2 ¼ 0.2; when the quality of the building is sub-standard,
C3 ¼ 0.2; when the building design complies with require-
ment of TJ11-78 (Chinese seismic code for industrial and
civil buildings, 1978), C4 ¼ 2 0.25; and, finally, when
building design complies with TJ11-74 (Chinese seismic
code for industrial and civil buildings, 1974) but not
TJ11-78, C5 ¼ 2 0.2. Otherwise, we can set Ci ¼ 0
ði ¼ 1; 2; …; 5Þ.
Naturally, a higher maximum mean ductility factor m
implies a more severely damaged building. But, due to the
uncertainties involved in the estimation of seismic hazard
as well as in the analysis of structural response, the ductility
as well as the damage state is better represented in terms of
probability distribution function. In particular, both the
peak ground acceleration and seismic capacity of structures
are often found satisfying a lognormal probability distri-
bution versus the input ground parameters [14,24 – 27].
Indeed, by analyzing 3120 cases of elastic – plastic seismic
responses, Yin [24] suggested the following lognormal
distribution for m
" #
1 ðln m 2 lÞ2
f ðmÞ ¼ pffiffiffiffi exp 2 ð8Þ
2pjm 2j 2
where
! factor as integration limits, the probability of various
s2
2j ;
1 2 2
l ¼ ln m 2 j ¼ ln 1 þ 2 ð9Þ
m
In these equations, m and s are, respectively, the maximum
mean value estimated from Eq. (7) and the standard
deviation of the ductility factor of the stories. In this study,
we assume that the main uncertainty of the ductility factor
comes from uncertainty in the seismic hazard. Thus, the
value of s=m is taken from that of the earthquake intensity
as 1.25 [28]. Note that this ductility distribution depends on
the structural characteristics as well as the input ground
motions through the calculation of m:
2.5. Damage probability matrix
Fig. 3 shows a typical plot of the base shear Q versus the
ductility factor. Five damage states, D1, D2, D3, D4 and D5,
are assumed, corresponding to undamaged, slightly
damaged, moderately damaged, extensively damaged, and
completely damaged states, respectively. For frame
Fig. 3. A schematic diagram illustrating a typical plot of the base shear Q
against the ductility factor m. The segments of the curve representing
various damage states D1, D2, D3, D4 and D5 (corresponding to no
damage, slight damage, moderate damage, extensive damage and complete
damage) are indicated. The thresholds of the ductility factor corresponding
to the onset of slight damage, moderate damage, extensive damage and
complete damage are 1.0, 1.5, 3 and 5, respectively.
structure with shear walls, the threshold ductility factors
for the onset of slightly damaged, moderately damaged,
extensively damaged and completely damaged states are
1.0, 1.5, 3.0 and 5, respectively [24]. These values are
empirical constants and may vary from one type of building
to another.
Because of the randomness of ground motions and
seismic responses, the earthquake damages are modeled as
probabilistic phenomena in order to closely reflect its
scattering nature of occurrence. Damage probability distri-
bution for various damage states of a specific building is
represented as the DPM. It describes the probability that the
structure is in a particular damage state for a given level of
ground shaking. Using the threshold values of the ductility
damage states for a given ground motion can be obtained
by integrating Eq. (8).
In Section 3, a particular structure will be used as an
example to illustrate the combined effect of the soil
condition and epicentral distance on DPM for various
design intensities.
3. DPM for a 21-storey RC frame/shear wall building
One particular 21-storey RC frame/shear wall building of
Mei Foo Sun Chuen is chosen for our study because Mei
Foo Sun Chuen is one of the largest private housing estates
in Hong Kong. More importantly, the structural scheming
for Mei Foo Sun Chuen is also similar to those used in other
newer residential buildings built recently in Hong Kong.
There are a total of 102 building blocks in Mei Foo Sun
Chuen, and all of them are of the same height and of similar
structural scheming. The whole estate was built in eight
different phases on a reclaimed land in the 1960s and 1970s.
 Z.P. Wen et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 22 (2002) 1175–1182 1179

The building that we choose for the present study is the 5-7 Table 2
Humbert Street of Phase 5, as shown in Fig. 4(a). The lower The storey height, area and yield shear for the selected frame-shear wall
building from Mei Foo Sun Chuen
two levels are car parks and the upper 19 levels are
residential stories, and these two levels are connected at the Storey no. Storey height (m) Area of storey (m2) Qyx (MN)
podium level. There is a sudden change in the building
stiffness from the upper to the lower levels. The structural 20 2.65 548.1 5.08
plan of the columns and shear walls for a typical storey of 11 –19 2.65 548.1 18.9
10 2.54 548.1 18.9
the upper level is shown in Fig. 4(b), while the two car park
9 2.77 548.1 24.3
levels shown in Fig. 4(c). The storey height and area of 6– 8 2.65 548.1 24.3
storey at various levels are compiled in Table 2. The height 4– 5 2.65 548.1 29.2
of the building H is taken as 55.75 m while the length is 3 2.74 548.1 29.2
taken as 32 m, and the corresponding natural period of the Podium 2.71 882.2 27.4
Upper parking 2.59 940.4 35.3
structure estimated from Eq. (3) is about 1 s.
Ground parking 2.59 907.1 38.1
For our parametric studies, the building is assumed to
rest on different site conditions SC I, SC II, SC III, and SC
IV, and subject to various levels of seismic intensities (VI,
VII, VIII, IX and X of a return period of 475 years). Both far building for the five damage states (D1, D2, D3, D4 and D5)
field and near field earthquake excitations are considered. subject to intensity levels from VI to X under both far field
The self-weight of the building at various level is calculated and near field earthquakes. Table 4 demonstrates that the
based on a distributed load of 1.2 ton/m2. Although the distribution of the ductility factor and the DPM depend
structure is neither perfectly symmetric nor perfectly strongly on the site condition and on whether the earthquake
uniform along the height, its stiffness variation along the is near or far field.
height is considered not too drastic. Also noting the fact that For the selected building, Table 4 shows that a higher
the building is about 30 years P old, thus a combined total probability of damage is obtained for a softer site condition.
correction of 0.25 is applied to Ci in Eq. (7). For intensities VI and VII, the site condition is not very
Applying formulas (1) – (7), the maximum mean ductility significant for both near and far field earthquakes. For
m for the building subject to various earthquake intensities, earthquake intensity of VIII, the probability of complete
site conditions and near or far field earthquake is tabulated collapse (P ) increases from 1 to 24% for near field
in Table 3. Table 2 also complies the storey yield shear at earthquake and from 1 to 41% for far field earthquake if
various levels calculated according to Eq. (4). As expected, the building is moved form a rock site (SC I) to a site of
m increases with the intensity. In addition, m is larger for far 80 m thick of soft clay (SC IV). For intensity IX, P increases
field earthquakes than for near field earthquakes, and this from 6 to 69% for near field earthquake and from 14 to 79%
agrees with the field observation that high-rise building is for far field earthquake if the building is moved form SC I
more responsive to long period far field ground motion. The site to SC IV site. For typical reclamation sites in Hong
integration of different segment of ductility curves leads to Kong consisting of 40 m of fill, alluvium, and marine
the probability of various damage states (Fig. 3). For various deposit, the site condition can be approximated by SC II;
site conditions, Table 4 tabulates the DPM of the selected and thus, the probabilities of structures suffering from
moderate damage to complete collapse are 1, 18, 70 and
96% for near field earthquake, and 9, 26, 85 and 98% for far
field earthquake for earthquake intensity of VII, VIII, IX, X,
respectively. Therefore, site effect is very important and not
to be neglected. In short, a high-rise RC building resting on
a soft site is more conducive to damages than to rest on a
rock site, as it has been demonstrated in the case of 1985
Mexico City earthquake. In addition, high-rise building is
more conducive to far field earthquake than to near field
earthquake. It is because far field seismic ground motions
are richer in higher period content than the near field seismic
motions. This conclusion also agrees with the field
observations during large earthquakes.
Another popular way to present the DPM is to plot the
exceeding probability for a particular damage state (i.e.
Fig. 4. (a) A photograph of the selected 21-storey RC frame-shear wall
probability of a specified damage level will be exceeded)
building in Mei Foo Sun Chuen used in the vulnerability analysis; (b) the
plan section of the columns and shear walls of the building shown in (a); versus the input seismic intensity as vulnerability or fragility
and (c) an enlargement of the first two levels of parking. curves, as used in Shinozuka et al. [29] and Karim and
1180 Z.P. Wen et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 22 (2002) 1175–1182

Table 3
The maximum mean storey ductility factor versus the design intensity (VI, VII, VIII, IX, and X) for various site conditions (SC I, SC II, SC III, and SC IV) and
for both near and far field earthquakes

Intensity The maximum mean ductility factor of storey ðmÞ

SC I SC II SC III SC IV

Near Far Near Far Near Far Near Far

VI 0.185 0.226 0.263 0.34 0.34 0.445 0.519 0.663

VII 0.354 0.433 0.5 0.65 0.65 0.855 0.994 1.1
VIII 0.688 0.848 0.978 1.306 1.306 2.79 3.95 6.375
IX 1.7 2.875 4.00 6.65 6.65 10.45 12.86 17.36
X 7.75 10.6 13.0 17.9 17.9 24.05 34.88 34.16

Yamazaki [30] for bridges. But such fragility curves will not
be given here as they can be generated readily from Table 4.
Although only one particular high-rise building has been
employed as an example in this study, we expect that similar
conclusions can also be obtained of other high-rise buildings
in Hong Kong. We also expect that the results of this paper
should not be very sensitive to the particular base shear
method or seismic code being adopted.
The results in this paper indicate that damages of the high-
rise buildings are more severe in soft site under far field
earthquakes than in stiff site under near field earthquakes.
This is consistent with commonly observed phenomenon
of ‘highly selective-damage’. Tall flexible structures (with
a long natural period) on soft soil are more conductive to
damage under far field large earthquakes than on rock site
under near field earthquakes. On the contrary, stiff low-rise
buildings appear to be vulnerable to earthquake when they sit
on firm soil under near field moderate earthquakes. There-
fore, the damages are highly selective in terms of the natural
frequencies of structures and of ground shaking.
Physically, large earthquake is more capable of produ-
cing longer-period ground motions than smaller earthquake
does. As seismic waves travel along the Earth crust from a
fault, their higher-frequency components are scattered and

Table 4
DPM in probability of damage (P ) versus intensity for site conditions SC I, SC II, SC III and SC IV (Near: near field earthquakes; Far: far field earthquakes)

Damage state Probability of damage (%) by intensity

VI VII VIII IX X

Near Far Near Far Near Far Near Far Near Far

SC I
D1 98 98 94 91 81 75 48 27 5 3
D2 2 2 4 5 9 11 16 16 6 3
D3 0 0 2 3 8 10 22 26 20 15
D4 0 0 0 1 1 3 8 17 20 18
D5 0 0 0 0 1 1 6 14 49 61
SC II
D1 97 95 95 82 70 58 18 7 2 0
D2 2 3 4 9 12 16 12 8 2 2
D3 1 2 1 7 13 17 28 21 12 7
D4 0 0 0 2 4 6 18 22 16 11
D5 0 0 0 0 1 3 24 42 68 80

SC III
D1 95 90 82 74 58 28 7 3 0 0
D2 3 6 9 12 16 16 8 5 2 1
D3 2 3 7 10 17 27 21 13 7 4
D4 0 1 2 3 6 15 22 19 11 8
D5 0 0 0 1 3 14 42 60 80 87
SC IV
D1 87 81 68 65 18 8 2 1 0 0
D2 7 9 14 14 12 8 2 1 1 0
D3 5 8 13 15 28 23 12 7 2 2
D4 1 2 3 4 18 20 15 12 4 5
D5 0 0 2 2 24 41 69 79 93 93
 Z.P. Wen et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 22 (2002) 1175–1182
dissipated more rapidly than their lower-frequency com-
ponents (see Ref. [31] or fig. 3.23 of Ref. [2]). As a result,
the frequency content also changes with the epicentral
distance, and, thus, far field earthquakes are richer in longer-
period motions. Therefore, tall flexible buildings with
longer natural period are more vibrant when subject to far
field earthquakes.
4. Conclusion
In this paper, the site and epicentral distance effects on
the vulnerability of high-rise buildings were incorporated
into the DPM. This is the first time that these effects are
incorporated into the DPM following a systematic and
analytical approach, instead of using a more subjective
‘expert adjustment approach’. More specifically, we have
used a multi-degree-of-freedom lump mass system to
represent a typical high-rise reinforced concrete building
in Hong Kong. The seismic forces at each storey level are
calculated using the base shear method. The effects of the
site condition and the natural period of the building are
automatically incorporated by using a site- and earthquake-
source-dependent design response spectrum. In addition, the
chosen seismic input parameters also depend on whether the
design earthquake is near field or far field. This seismic
force is then compared to the yield shear of each storey,
such that a storey yield shear coefficient can be obtained.
This coefficient is subsequently used to estimate the
maximum mean ductility of the building through the use
of a simple empirical relation. The adjusted maximum mean
ductility is then used to form a lognormal distribution of the
ductility factor. By integrating these distributions, fragility
curves or DPM of the building under various types and
levels of seismic input have been obtained. The results in
Table 4 show that damage for high-rise buildings is more
severe for far field earthquake than for near field earthquake
because of its richer low frequency contents. Therefore,
high-rise buildings on soft soil and subject to far field
earthquakes are more conducive damages than on rock site
and subject to near field earthquakes. This is consistent with
commonly observed field phenomenon of highly selective-
damage. We expect that the same conclusion can also be
drawn even when we use another high-rise building and
follow a slightly different analytical method.
In conclusion, both the effects of site condition and
epicentral distance should be incorporated analytically into
the calculation of DPM or fragility curves. Site and
epicentral distance effects are important and not to be
neglected.
Acknowledgements
The research was supported by ASD projects A202
and A214 of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
1181
The authors would like to thank Mr Philip Kwok the
Buildings Department of Hong Kong SAR Government in
providing building information.
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