Critical building separation distance in reducing pounding risk under earthquake excitation

A separation distance between adjacent buildings is provided to reduce the risk of pounding of adjacent buildings under seismic excitations. It should be recognized that the evaluation of the critical separation distance is a one-sided barrier crossing problem while the problem of structural design under seismic excitations is a two-sided crossing problem. A procedure for assessing the required separation distance with or without considering possible uncertainty in structural properties was presented based on the reliability methods and random vibration theory. The procedure was used to carry out parametric analyses. It is shown that use of the complete quadratic combination (CQC) rule with the modal responses employed for designing structures may over- or underestimate the critical separation distance, depending on the damping ratios and the closeness of the natural vibration periods of adjacent buildings. This is due to not only one-sided versus two-sided crossing problem but also the approximation in the CQC rule. Further, the effect of the uncertainty in structural properties on the estimated separation is investigated. The results indicate that this uncertainty tends to increase the required critical separation distance.