الفهرس 
Acknowledgements
Classification of Pounding DamageOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
An important part of engineering applications is the analysis and prediction of the dynamic behavior of structures. The analysis of the response of structures under dynamic loads is a difficult work, especially if the response is nonlinear. The nonlinear dynamic response analysis of structural dynamic problems requires the solution of structural dynamic equations of motion. The exact solution for this kind of problems is very complex, analytical solutions being available only for very special cases. For more general and complex cases, especially regarding seismic loading, efficient numerical methods are used to solve the governing equations of motion.
The effect of the pounding between neighboring insufficiently separated buildings in series under earthquake excitation are investigated in the thesis. A three-dimensional (3D) finite element (FE) model has been defined and 3D nonlinear time-history analyses have been performed for three adjacent buildings with different structural characteristics in the study. The models have been excited using a suit of ground motions with different peak ground accelerations (PGA). A GAP joint element model has been employed in order to capture impact forces during collisions.
The results of the numerical simulations, in the form of the structural nonlinear responses during pounding-involved vibrations are presented in the thesis. In addition, the variation in story’s peak responses for different design parameters that include: number of stories, separation distances, in row alignment configurations and in-plan alignment configurations are also shown and comparisons are made with the results obtained for nominal model without pounding.
Abstract
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The results of the study indicate that the severity of the seismic pounding effects depends on the vibration characteristics of the adjacent buildings and the input excitation characteristics, the alignment position of the building in the row, the in-plan alignment of the adjacent buildings and the separation gap size among the adjacent buildings. Seismic pounding among adjacent buildings induces greater shear force and acceleration response demands at different story levels compared to the no-pounding case response demands.