Mitigation of seismic pounding effects of two adjacent reinforced concrete structures

Past earthquakes showed that pounding effects is a highly serious problem in damaging colliding adjacent reinforced concrete (RC) structures which are seperated insufficiently. Exact distance limits are given in current codes to prevent these kinds of pounding effects. However due to dissimilarities in dynamic characteristics of two structures, the collision is inevitable. The dissimilarity could be due to the differences in material qualities and/or the number of stories of the buildings. The pounding forces could be more destructive when the slabs of the RC structures are not at the same level. The shear capacity of the column could be exceeded due to colliding one structure's slab to the other's column. Inorder to understand these pounding effects, nonlinear analytical models are created and a simulation study is performed under the effetcs of several selected earthquake records. The analysis results showed that great amount of pounding forces could be produced due to the collision of two adjacent RC structures having insufficient gaps. The pounding forces could be reduced and the damaging effects could be eliminated by filling this gap with the neopren material. The pounding energy could be absorbed by means of neopren pad. Analysis results showed that the shear capacity of the columns were not exceeded incase of neopren infill material.