Effectiveness of Using Polymer Bumpers to Mitigate Earthquake-Induced Pounding between Buildings of Unequal Heights

Collisions often happen between adjacent buildings without a sufficient gap under seismic loadings. Installing polymer bumpers may decrease the pounding forces between colliding buildings. This paper focuses on the analysis of suppressing pounding effects by using of polymer bumpers. In order to inv...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jian He, Yu Jiang, Qichao Xue, Chunwei Zhang, Jingcai Zhang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2018-01-01
Series:Advances in Civil Engineering
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2018/7871404
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Collisions often happen between adjacent buildings without a sufficient gap under seismic loadings. Installing polymer bumpers may decrease the pounding forces between colliding buildings. This paper focuses on the analysis of suppressing pounding effects by using of polymer bumpers. In order to investigate pounding mitigation effectiveness in the condition with and without bumpers, different types of pounding force models are utilized to simulate and calculate frame vibration responses under seismic loads. Firstly, time-history results for pounding force, displacements, and shearing forces in selected floors are calculated in the condition with and without polymer bumpers. Secondly, differences between viscoelastic and elastic pounding force models are compared and discussed. And finally, parametric studies are carried out to investigate influences of different pounding parameters. The results show that polymer bumpers can reduce maximum values of pounding force but increase pounding times. And viscoelasticity of bumper materials has a certain range of influences on pounding force responses. Choosing improper material types and pounding parameters may lead to opposite effects.
ISSN:1687-8086
1687-8094