| Earthquakes and Structures Volume 5, Number 6, December 2013, pages 679-702 DOI: https://doi.org/10.12989/eas.2013.5.6.679 | |
Plastic hinge length of RC columns considering soil-structure interaction | |
Alireza Mortezaei
|
|
| Abstract [Buy Article] | |
| During an earthquake, soils filter and send out the shaking to the building and simultaneously it has the role of bearing the building vibrations and transmitting them back to the ground. In other words, the ground and the building interact with each other. Hence, soil-structure interaction (SSI) is a key parameter that affects the performance of buildings during the earthquakes and is worth to be taken into consideration. Columns are one of the most crucial elements in RC buildings that play an important role in stability of the building and must be able to dissipate energy under seismic loads. Recent earthquakes showed that formation of plastic hinges in columns is still possible as a result of strong ground motion, despite the application of strong column-weak beam concept, as recommended by various design codes. Energy is dissipated through the plastic deformation of specific zones at the end of a member without affecting the rest of the structure. The formation of a plastic hinge in an RC column in regions that experience inelastic actions depends on the column details as well as soil-structure interaction (SSI). In this paper, 854 different scenarios have been analyzed by inelastic time-history analyses to predict the nonlinear behavior of RC columns considering soil-structure interaction (SSI). The effects of axial load, height over depth ratio, main period of soil and structure as well as different characteristics of earthquakes, are evaluated analytically by finite element methods and the results are compared with corresponding experimental data. Findings from this study provide a simple expression to estimate plastic hinge length of RC columns including soil-structure interaction. | |
| Key Words | |
| soil-structure interaction; plastic hinge length; nonlinear behaviour; finite element analysis | |
| Address | |
| Alireza Mortezaei: Department of Civil Engineering, Semnan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Semnan, Iran | |
