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 slab’s 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 near-
fault 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.

1 INTRODUCTION by the peak ground acceleration (PGA) while for the

A challenging research topic in engineering seismol-
ogy and earthquake engineering is the characterization
of near-fault seismic motions and their effects on the
performance of special structures, such as tall build-
ing. 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 con-
trol its behavior under near-fault excitations. While
there is a good understanding of the first aspect of
the problem, there are still uncertainties and difficul-
ties 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 earth-
quake 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 dis-
placement time histories. These pulses represent high
input energy to the structure and results in different
structural response than that due to far-fault earth-
quakes. 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
near-fault records this is not always the case. The accel-
eration 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 con-
crete columns, beams, walls and slabs, is very popular
particularly in the Middle East because it allows a more
flexible plan layout without columns. Analysis soft-
wares 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 struc-
tures may be significantly underestimated (Lee & Kim
2000). The underestimation of the stiffness will lead
to longer natural periods that may result in the under-
estimation 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 1. Example structures; (a) Plan type A, (b) Plan
type B.
of slabs. For accurate results, appropriate cracked sec-
tion 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 sys-
tems. For FE modeling, an analysis tool which is based
on layered nonlinear finite element method to inves-
tigate 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
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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.
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 struc-
tural 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 near-
fault ground motions as well as Tabas for dynamic
analysis.
3 SEISMIC RESPONSE OF DIFFERENT
BUILDING SYSTEM
The equivalent static analysis and time history analysis
were performed with the framed structures and the

Figure 3. Displacements of 14-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 earth-
quakes (Tabas and Bam) are plotted in Figure 3 and in
Figure 4 for 14-story and 19-story structures respec-
tively. 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 flexu-
ral stiffness of slabs is included in the analysis. In the
framed structures, the effects of the floor slabs are sim-
ilar 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 dis-
placement of the 19-story framed structure with plan
type A was reduced by 24% when the flexural stiff-
ness 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
223
Figure 4. Displacements of 19-story structures; (Top) Plan
type A, (Bottom) Plan type B.
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, impor-
tance 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. There-
fore, 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 accel-
eration 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
 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 flexu-
ral 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 build-
ing. Future studies can focus on finding the modes
of slab deformation in a wall-frame system struc-
ture 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 bend-
ing 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 flexu-
ral stiffness of slabs, while a shear wall may be
more efficiently modeled with only one element
Figure 5. Natural periods of vibration for 14-story struc- per story.
tures; (Top) Plan type A, (Bottom) Plan type B.

REFERENCES
Table 1. Base shear calculated from response spectrum
(unit: kN). Ghayamghamian MR and Hisada Y. 2007. Near Fault Strong
Motion Complexity of the 2003 Bam Earthquake (Iran)
A B and Low Frequency Ground Motion Simulation. Geo-
Plan Type physical Journal International, 170(2), 679–686.
Model R S R S Lee DG, Kim HS. 2000. The effect of the floor slabs on
the seismic response of multi-story building structures.
14-Story 201 215 375 393 Proceedings of APSEC2000, Sep; Malaysia.
19-Story 251 259 417 469 Mortezaei A. 2009. A program for three-dimensional non-
linear dynamic analysis of reinforced concrete buildings,
School of Civil Engineering, The University of Queens-
land, Brisbane, Queensland.
Wilson EL and Habibullah A. 2007. ETABS — three
include the flexural stiffness of slabs adequately based dimensional analysis of building systems users manual,
on the actual behavior of a building. Computers & Structures Inc, Berkeley (CA).

4 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

The effects of floor slabs on seismic response of

medium and high-rise apartment building structures

224