EURODYN 2020

Adequacy of accidental eccentricity in accounting for the effects of the torsional

component of earthquakes on the seismic damage
1 2 3*
Konstantinos Morfidis , Konstantinos Kostinakis , Nikolaos Pneymatikos
1
EPPO-ITSAK
55535 Pylaia, Thessaloniki, Greece
konmorf@gmail.com
2
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
kkostina@civil.auth.gr
3
University of West Attica
12243 Athens, Greece
pnevma@uniwa.gr

ABSTRACT
Generally, the seismic analysis and design of new buildings, as well as the assessment of the seismic
performance of existing ones, are only conducted by applying the translational components of earthquakes,
thus ignoring the effects of the rotational components on the structural response. The main reason for the
above assumption is the fact that earthquake records that include rotational components were not available
since the last years, because these components are difficult to be recorded by accelerographs in the free
field. Thus, some researchers attempted to derive rotational components by combining mathematical
equations with the properties of surface and body waves and geological parameters of soil. Nevertheless,
during the last years it has been made feasible to record real ground motion with rotational components too.
The rotational components of an earthquake record consist of the torsional component, which is the rotation
about vertical axis, and the other two rocking components, which is the rotation about the two horizontal
axes. The effects of these components of earthquakes on structures have been studied by a number of
investigators and it was found that their contribution may significantly affect the seismic response and the
damage of structures. Considering the torsional component, current seismic code provisions allow to ignore
it when conducting the seismic analysis (with the exception of special structures e.g. towers, masts and
chimneys, see [1]), but they recommend the shifting of mass center in order to account for the effects of this
component on the seismic response (e.g. [2,3]). The shifting of mass center is achieved with the aid of the
accidental eccentricity. In the present paper the adequacy of the accidental eccentricity as a parameter to
capture the effects of the torsional component on the seismic damage is further investigated. For this
purpose, two 3D 5-storey R/C buildings (one symmetric and one asymmetric) with structural systems
consisting of frames and walls are investigated. The buildings are analysed with the aid of nonlinear time-
history analysis using an adequate number of real ground motions with translational and rotational
components. Different structural models of each building are investigated: a) a model taking into account the
translational and the torsional component of the seismic motion and b) models taking into account only the
translational components of the seismic motion, but using different values of the accidental eccentricity.
Then, a comparison between the above models is carried out in order to examine the effectiveness of the
accidental eccentricity in capturing the effects of torsional component of seismic motion. Useful results are
derived concerning the effectiveness of the specific code provisions.

References

[1] EC8 (Eurocode 8). Design of structures for earthquake resistance - part 6: Towers, masts and chimneys.
European Committee for Standardization; 2005.
[2] D. Basu, M.C. Constantinou, S.A. Whittaker, An equivalent accidental eccentricity to account for the
effects of torsional ground motion on structures. Eng. Struct. 69 (2014) 305–377.
[3] K.G. Stathopoulos, S.A. Anagnostopoulos, Inelastic torsion of multistory buildings under earthquake
excitations. Earth. Eng. Struct. Dyn. 34(12) (2005) 1449–1465.

Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)