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EERI San Diego, SEAOSD and GeoInstitute San Diego Joint Meeting

Seismic Demands for High-Rise Buildings: Interaction between Geotechnical and Structural Engineers

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Guest Speakers:

Prof. Jack Moehle (Univerity of California Berkeley)

Prof. Jonathan Stewart (University of California Los Angeles)

Performance-based seismic design of tall buildings has evolved in recent years to permit buildings designed outside the prescriptive provisions of the building code. A performance-designed project typically requires definition of performance objectives, development of the structural system, definition of seismic hazard, and verification of seismic performance using nonlinear dynamic analysis. One of the challenges to be overcome in design is the communication of modeling and analysis requirements between structural and geotechnical engineers. The seminar will emphasize the required handoffs.

Dr. Moehle will introduce the recently published PEER Tall Buildings Initiative for Performance-Based Seismic Design of Tall Buildings. The presentation will cover team qualifications, performance objectives, modeling and analysis requirements, performance evaluation, and the review process. The presentation also will review typical handoffs between structural and geotechnical engineers, including typical assumptions for soil-foundation-structure modeling and selection and scaling of earthquake ground motions. Emphasis will be on requirements from the perspective of the structural engineer.

Dr. Stewart will review outcomes of a recent ATC/NIST project on modeling seismic Soil-Structure Interaction (SSI) effects for building structures, with an emphasis on applications to tall buildings. The conditions under which SSI effects are most pronounced will be identified. The basis for the SSI procedures in the PEER Tall Buildings project will be reviewed. Typical problems encountered in the communications between structural and geotechnical engineers for SSI problems will be described along with proposed solutions proposed within the ATC/NIST project.