Soft Soil Seismic Design Spectra Including Soil-structure Interaction

Design spectrum is known as an essential tool in earthquake engineering for calculation of maximum (design) responses in a structural system. Soil-structure interaction (SSI), as a phenomenon of coupling of responses of a structure and its underlying soil, was explored after introduction of design spectra and has not been taken into account in developing a design spectrum traditionally. To consider the SSI automatically when doing a spectrum analysis, in this paper maximum response of a single degree of freedom system resting on a flexible base is determined under consistent earthquakes. Consistency of earthquakes is maintained by considering their magnitude, distance, local soil type, and return period. The latter parameter is accounted by the use of earthquake categories identified by their similar spectral values at short periods. Different types of soils and two categories of earthquakes regarding their distance, being near field and far field, are considered. The results are presented as smoothed design spectra. It is shown that SSI alters the response acceleration of buildings having up to about 10 stories and is ineffective for the rest. It has an increasing effect for the response acceleration of buildings up to about 5 stories.