Analysis of lateral-torsional-pounding responses of adjacent structures to spatially varying seismic motion

Pounding damage to inadequately separated adjacent building structures has been observed in almost all the previous major earthquakes. Many researchers have studied the pounding effects on structural responses and damage. In most of those studies, only lateral responses of symmetric adjacent structures to uniform ground excitation are considered. In practice, many structures are not symmetric and ground motion at the different structural supports inevitably varies. Present paper studies the coupled lateral-torsional-pounding responses of nonsymmetrical adjacent structures to non-uniform ground excitations. Time history analysis is performed. Spatially varying ground motions are stochastically simulated for the analysis. Effects of the torsional stiffness, vibration frequencies, and eccentricities of the adjacent structures, the initial gap between the two structures, as well as the ground motion spatial variability, on coupled lateral-torsional-pounding responses are investigated. Numerical results are presented in dimensionless form and are also compared with the current code torsional provisions. Only linear elastic responses are considered in the present study.