Seismic Behaviour of Steel Moment Resisting Buildings on Soft Soil

Considering Soil-Structure Interaction

H.R. Tabatabaiefar, B. Fatahi & B. Samali

School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney
(UTS), Sydney, Australia

ABSTRACT
The 1985 Mexico City and many other recent earthquakes clearly illustrate the importance of local soil properties
on the earthquake response of structures. These earthquakes demonstrated that the rock motions could be amplified
at the base of the structure. Therefore, there is a strong engineering motivation for a site-dependent dynamic
response analysis for many foundations to determine the free-field earthquake motions. The determination of a
realistic site-dependent free-field surface motion at the base of the structure can be the most important step in the
earthquake resistant design of structures. In this study, the effects of Soil-Structure Interaction on seismic
behaviour of steel moment resisting building frames have been studied using Finite Difference Method. Two types
of mid-rise structures, including 5 and 15 storey buildings on a soft soil deposit have been selected and analysed
under influence of three different earthquake acceleration records. The above mentioned frames been analysed
under two different boundary conditions: (i) fixed-base (no soil-structure interaction), and (ii) flexible-base
(considering soil-structure interaction).
The results of the analyses in terms of structural forces and lateral displacements for the above mentioned
boundary conditions have been compared and discussed. It is concluded that the dynamic soil-structure interaction
plays a significant role in the seismic behaviour of the mentioned building frames including substantial increment
in lateral inter-storey drifts of the structures and changing the performance level of the structures from life safe to
near collapse or total collapse. Thus, Considering SSI effects in seismic design of steel moment resisting building
frames resting on soft soil deposit is essential.

Keywords: Soil-Structure Interaction, Seismic Behaviour, Soft Soil, Steel Moment Resisting Frames

1. INTRODUCTION

The 28 December 1989 Newcastle earthquake (Australia) killed and injured over 150 people and
damage bill was about $4 billion. Recently, a similar disaster hit Haiti on 12 January 2010 causing over
200,000 deaths, and leaving over 3 million people homeless. The similarity of these two earthquakes is
that both of them are intra-plate earthquake occurring in the interior of a tectonic plate. In both cases,
many mid-rise buildings (approximately 6-15 stories) constructed on weak soil were severely damaged.
Therefore, there is a need to design structures safely but not costly against natural disasters such as
earthquakes. Effects of soil-structure interaction under extreme loads due to strong earthquakes are
significant for many classes of structures and must be addressed precisely in the design.

Ground motions which are not affected by the presence of structures are referred to as free–field
motions. When a structure resting on the solid rock is subjected to seismic loads of an earthquake, the
high stiffness of the rock compels the rock motion to be very close to the free-filed motion. Structures
founded on the rock are assumed to be fixed-base structures. However, the same structure would respond
differently if it is supported on the soft soil deposit. The inability of the foundation to conform to the
deformations of the free-field motion would cause the motion of the base of the structure to deviate from
the free-field motion. The dynamic response of the structure itself would induce deformation of the
supporting soil. This process, in which the response of the soil influences the motion of the structure and
response of the structure influences the motion of the soil, is referred to Soil-Structure Interaction (SSI).
According to available literature, generally when the shear wave velocity of the supporting soil is less
than 600 m/s, the effects of soil-structure interaction on the seismic response of structural systems
particularly for moment resisting building frames are significant. These effects can be summarised as:
(i) increase in the natural period and damping of the system, (ii) increase in the lateral displacements
of the structure, and (iii) change in the base shear depending on the frequency content of the input
motion and dynamic characteristics of the soil and the structure.

Performance-based seismic engineering design is the modern approach to earthquake-resistant design.

Seismic performance (performance level) is described by designating the maximum allowable damage
state (damage parameter) for an identified seismic hazard (hazard level). Performance levels describe
the state of structures after being subjected to a certain hazard level and are classified as: fully
operational, operational, life safe, near collapse, or collapse (FEMA, 1997). Overall lateral deflection,
ductility demand, and inter-storey drifts are the most commonly used damage parameters. The above
mentioned five qualitative performance levels are related to the corresponding quantitative maximum
inter-storey drifts (as a damage parameter) of: <0·2%, <0·5%, <1·5%, <2·5%, and >2·5%,
respectively.

During the recent decades, the importance of dynamic soil-structure interaction for several structures
founded on soft soils has been well recognised. Several researchers such as Veletsos and Meek (1974),
Kobayashi et al. (1986), Gazetas and Mylonakis (1998), Wolf and Deeks (2004), and Galal and Naimi
(2008) studied structural behaviour of unbraced structures subjected to earthquake under influence of
soil-structure interaction. Examples are given by Gazetas and Mylonakis (1998) including evidences
that some structures founded on soft soils are vulnerable to SSI. Thus, for ordinary building structures,
the necessity of a better insight in the physical phenomena involved in SSI problems has been
precipitated.

2. PRINCIPLES OF SSI NUMERICAL MODELLING

Numerical methods are very strong and accurate methods for soil-structure interaction analysis. A
soil-structure system comprising structure, common nodes, soil foundation system and earthquake
induced acceleration at the level of the bed rock is shown in Fig.1.

Structure

Common Nodes

Soil Foundation System

𝑼𝑼̈𝒈𝒈

Figure 1. Soil-Structure System

The dynamic equation of motion of the soil and structure system can be written as:

[𝑀𝑀]{𝑢𝑢̈ } + [𝐶𝐶]{𝑢𝑢̇ } + [𝐾𝐾]{𝑢𝑢} = −[𝑀𝑀]{𝑚𝑚}𝑢𝑢̈ 𝑔𝑔 + {𝐹𝐹𝑣𝑣 } (2.1)

where, {u} , {u} and {u} are the nodal displacements, velocities and accelerations with respect to the
underlying soil foundation, respectively. [M ] , [C ] and [K ] are the mass, damping and stiffness
matrices, respectively. It is more appropriate to use the incremental form of Eq. (2.1) when plasticity is
included, and then the matrix [K ] should be the tangential matrix and [ug ] is the earthquake induced
acceleration at the level of the bed rock. {Fv } is the force vector corresponding to the viscous
boundaries. The above mentioned method, where entire soil-structure system is modelled in one step, is
called Direct Method. The use of direct method requires a computer program that can treat the behaviour
of both soil and structure with equal rigor (Kramer 1996). This method is one of the most realistic
methods of analysis which can model soil-structure systems thoroughly by exploiting powerful
computers and strong numerical software.

3. METHOD OF DYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF SOIL-STRUCTURE SYSTEM

Several attempts have been made in recent years in the development of analytical methods for
assessing the response of structures and supporting soil media under seismic loading conditions.
Successful application of these methods for determining ground seismic response is vitally dependent
on the incorporation of the soil properties in the analyses. As a result, substantial effort has also been
made toward the determination of soil attributes for use in these analytical procedures. There are two
main analytical procedures for dynamic analysis of soil-structure systems under seismic loads, namely,
equivalent-linear and fully nonlinear methods.

Byrne et al. (2006) and Beaty and Byrne (2001) provided some overviews of the above mentioned
methods and discuss the benefit of the nonlinear numerical method over the equivalent-linear method
for different practical applications. The equivalent-linear method is not appropriate to be used in
dynamic soil-structure interaction analysis as it does not capture directly any nonlinear effects because
it assumes linearity during the solution process. In addition, strain-dependent modulus and damping
functions are only taken into account in an average sense, in order to approximate some effects of
nonlinearity (e.g. damping and material softening).They concluded that the most appropriate method
for dynamic analysis of soil-structure system is fully nonlinear method. The method correctly
represents the physics and follows the realistic stress-strain relation. In addition, the following
characteristics for a fully nonlinear method are desirable:

 The method follows any prescribed nonlinear constitutive relation,

 Nonlinear material law, interference and mixing of different frequency components can be
captured,
 Irreversible displacements and other permanent changes are modelled automatically,
 A proper plasticity formulation is used in all of the built-in models, whereby plastic strain
increments are related to stresses,
 Both shear and compression waves are propagated together in a single simulation, and the
material responds to the combined effect of both components.

Considering the above mentioned priorities of the fully nonlinear method for dynamic analysis of
soil-structure systems, this method is used in this research in order to reach obtain reliable results.

4. GEOTECHNICAL AND STRUCTURAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MODELS

4.1. Characteristics of Structural Models

In this research, two structural models, consisting of 5 and 15 story models, representing the
conventional types of buildings in a relatively high risk earthquake prone zone, as per specifications
mentioned in Table 1, have been selected. In the selection of the frames' span width, it has been tried
to make this width to be conforming to architectural norms and construction practices of the
conventional buildings in mega cities.

Table 1. Dimensional characteristics of the studied frames

Reference Number Number Story Story Total Total
Name of of Height Width Height Width
(Code) Stories Bays (m) (m) (m) (m)
S5 5 3 3 4 15 12
S15 15 3 3 4 45 12

The above mentioned frames, as fixed-base structures, have been modelled, loaded vertically (dead and
live loads), and laterally (seismic loads) according to the Australian Standards AS1170. Dynamic
analyses of the structures for the design, have been done using dynamic spectral (modal) analysis method
according to normalized response spectra of AS1170.4-2007 (Fig. 2.) for subsoil class Ee (Vs ≤150 m/s).
Structural ductility factor μ = 4 and performance factor 𝑆𝑆𝑝𝑝 =0.67 for fully ductile steel moment-resisting
frames and hazard factor Z=0.22 for a relatively high risk zone have been used. Then structural sections
were designed according to AS4100-1998 (Steel structures) after seismic analyses.

Figure 2. Normalized response spectra for different subsoil classes (AS1170.4-2007)

5T 5T

4.2. Geotechnical Characteristics of the Subsoil Model

One type of soft clayey soil representing type Ee according to classification of the AS1170.4-2007
(Earthquake actions in Australia) is selected in this research. Since Galal and Naimi (2008) showed
that for moment resisting building frames up to 20 storey, considering the effect of SSI on seismic
behaviour is only necessary for the structures resting on soft soil deposit with shear wave velocity less
than 180 m/sec, examination is carried out in this research only on subsoil class Ee falling into this
category. Characteristics of the employed soil are summarized in Table 2, and have been extracted
from the actual geotechnical report. Therefore, these parameters have merit over the assumed
parameters which may not be completely conforming to the reality.

Table 2. Geotechnical characteristics of the utilised soft soil

Shear wave Shear Plastic
Soil Type
velocity
Unified
Module ρ Poisson
SPT Index
(AS1170) classification (Kg./m3) Ratio
Vs (m/s) Gmax (KPa)
P P

(PI)
Ee 150 CL 33100 1471 0.40 6 15

The shear wave velocity shown in Table 2 is obtained from down-hole test, which is a low strain
in-situ test. This test generates a cyclic shear strain of about 10−4 percent, where the resulting shear
modulus is called Gmax. In the event of an earthquake, the cyclic shear strain amplitude increases, and
the shear strain modulus (Gsec) and the damping ratio (ξ) varying with the cyclic shear strain
amplitude, change relatively. These nonlinearities in soil stiffness and damping ratio (Hysteretic
damping) for cohesionless soils were elucidated by Vucetic and Dobry (1991). Correlations between
G/Gmax and (ξ) versus cyclic shear strain ( γc ) and soil plasticity (PI) for normally and over
consolidated cohesionless soils are illustrated in Fig.3.

(a) (b)
Figure 3. (a) G/Gmax versus cyclic shear strain and (b) Soil damping ratio versus cyclic shear strain
(Vucetic and Dobry, 1991)

Using fully nonlinear method for dynamic analysis, enable us to apply these charts directly to the
model and incorporate the soil nonlinearity precisely.

5. NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF SOIL-STRUCTURE SYSTEM

The governing equations of the motion for the structure incorporating foundation interaction and the
method of solving these equations are relatively complex. Therefore, Direct Method using Finite
Difference software, FLAC2D, is employed in this study to model the soil-structure system and to solve the
equations for the complex geometries. FLAC (Fast Lagrangian Analysis of Continua) is a two-dimensional
explicit finite difference program for the engineering mechanics computation. This program simulates the
behaviour of structures built of soil, rock, steel, concrete or other materials. Materials are represented by
elements which can be adjusted to fit the geometry of the model. Each element behaves according to a
prescribed linear or nonlinear stress/strain law in response to the applied forces or boundary restraints. The
program offers a wide range of capabilities to solve complex problems in mechanics.

The soil-structure model (Fig. 4.) comprises beam elements to model structural elements, two
dimensional plane strain grid elements to model soil medium, fixed boundaries to model the bed rock,
quiet boundaries (Viscous boundaries) to avoid reflective waves produced by soil lateral boundaries,
and interface elements to simulate frictional contact and probable slip due to the seismic excitation.

Frame
FrameElements
Elements

Interface Elements

Quiet Boundary Quiet Boundary

Plane Strain Soil Elements

Fixed Boundary

Figure 4. Components of the Soil-Structure model in FLAC 2D

According to Rayhani and Naggar (2008) horizontal distance between soil boundaries is assumed to be
five times the structure width (60 m), and the bedrock depth is assumed to be 30 m research results.

6. DYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF SOIL-STRUCTURE INTERACTION

In this study, fully nonlinear time history dynamic analysis has been exploited using FLAC 2D to define
seismic response of steel moment resisting frames under influence of SSI. Dynamic analyses are carried
out for two different systems: (i) fixed-base columns on rigid ground (Fig. 5.); and (ii) frames with
subsoil (Fig. 6.) using direct method of soil-structure interaction analysis called flexible base.

Figure 5. Fixed base model Figure 6. Flexible base model

Earthquake ground motions are applied to both systems in two different ways. In the case of modelling
soil and structures simultaneously using direct method (flexible base), the earthquake records are
applied to the combination of soil and structure directly at the bed rock level, while in case of
modelling the structure as fixed base (without soil), the earthquake records are applied to the base of
the structural model. Three different sets of earthquake ground motions which are used in this study
are shown in Table 3.

Table 3. Earthquake ground motions used in analyses

Earthquake Station Year PGA (g) Mw (R)
Northridge USA 1994 0.843 6.7
Hachinohe Japan 1968 0.229 7.5
Kobe Japan 1995 0.833 6.8

7. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The results of both cases including base shear and inter-storey drifts have been determined and
compared respectively. According to the results summarised in Table 4, ratio of base shear of the
flexible-base models (𝑉𝑉�) to that of fixed-base (V) in all models are less than one. Therefore base shear
of the structures modelled with soil as flexible-base are always less than the base shear of structures
modelled as fixed base. These results have good conformity to the NEHRP-1997 regulations.

Table 4. Base shear ratio of flexible-base to fixed-base models

Reference 𝑉𝑉�
Earthquake V (KN) 𝑉𝑉� (KN)
Name 𝑉𝑉
Northridge 220 111 0.50
S5 Kobe 240 118 0.49
Hachinohe 80 42 0.52
Northridge 997 140 0.14
S15 Kobe 1400 230 0.16
Hachinohe 300 80 0.26
By comparing the inter-storey drifts it is observed that lateral drifts of the flexible base model
substantially increase in comparison to the fixed base model (Figs 7, 8, and 9). Generally these lateral
drift increments are more critical and noticeable for 15 storey models in comparison to 5 storey
models.

Fixed base Fixed base

Flexible base Flexible base
5 15
14
13
4 12
11
Storey Number

Storey Number
10
3 9
8
7
2 6
5
4
1 3
2
1
0 0
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4
Inter-storey Drift (%) Inter-storey Drift (%)

(a) (b)
Figure 7. Inter-storey drifts comparison for two cases of flexible and fixed-base under influence of Northridge
earthquake; (a) Model S5; (b) Model S15

Fixed base Fixed base

Flexible base Flexible base
5 15
14
13
4 12
11
Storey Number

Storey Number

10
3 9
8
7
2 6
5
4
1 3
2
1
0 0
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3
Inter-storey Drift (%) Inter-storey Drift (%)

(a) (b)
Figure 8. Inter-storey drifts comparison for two cases of flexible and fixed-base under influence of Kobe
earthquake; (a) Model S5; (b) Model S15

Fixed base Fixed base

Flexible base Flexible base
5 15
14
13
4 12
11
Storey Number

Storey Number

10
3 9
8
7
2 6
5
4
1 3
2
1
0 0
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4
Inter-storey Drift (%) Inter-storey Drift (%)

(a) (b)
Figure 9. Inter-storey drifts comparison for two cases of flexible and fixed-base under influence of Hachinohe
earthquake; (a) Model S5; (b) Model S15

Taking SSI effects into account, the spectral displacement ( S d ) may change considerably with change
in natural period. Therefore, such increase in the natural period may considerably alter the response of
the building frames under seismic excitation. In the case of utilised steel moment resisting building
frames resting on soft soil deposit, natural period lies in the long period region of the response spectrum
curve due to the natural period lengthening for such systems. Hence, the displacement response tends
to increase. Therefore, performance level of the structure may be changed from life safe into near
collapse or total collapse.

8. CONCLUSIONS

According to the results of the numerical investigation conducted in this study regarding to 5 and 15
storey steel moment resisting building frames resting on soft clayey soil, it is observed that the base
shear of the structures modelled with soil as flexible-base are always less than the base shear of the
structures modelled as fixed-base, while inter-storey drifts of the structures resting on soft soil deposit
substantially increase (more than twice) when soil-structure interaction is considered.

Considering the results of this study, performance level of the structures similar to the models used in
this study can be changed from life safe to near collapse or total collapse showing that the conventional
structural analysis methods assuming fixed-base structures is no longer adequate to guarantee the
structural safety. Therefore, considering SSI effects in seismic design of steel moment resisting building
frames resting on soft soil deposit is essential.

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