Seismic Design and Response of Heavy Industrial Steel Buildings

Abstract eng:
Seismic behaviour of a heavy industrial building with highly irregular geometry, and mass and stiffness distribution is investigated to assess the effectiveness of current procedures for seismic design of such structures. These procedures were developed essentially for conventional commercial or residential buildings with regular and well-defined seismic force resisting systems, and their use to predict adequately deformations and forces for irregular industrial building may be questionable. The studied building is located near Montreal, Canada, and houses a vertical mechanical process representative of mining and metal refining industry. It is braced by low-ductility concentrically braced steel frames. Three-dimensional elastic dynamic time history analyses were carried out for selected acceleration records compatible with the design spectra at the site. The results are compared to those obtained from the equivalent static force procedure and the response spectrum analysis method. The study shows that the equivalent static method can adequately predict the displacements, but may underestimate column and brace axial forces. In general, response spectrum analysis method, provided appropriate prediction of the seismic response of the highly irregular structure studied.

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