Dynamic responses of RC buildings subjected to near-fault ground motions

The first objective of this paper is to compare the dynamic behavior of reinforced concrete building structure subjected to near-fault and far-field ground motions. A twelve-story and a five-story reinforced concrete building with moment resisting frame designed according to the Taiwan building code was selected in this study. The Chi-Chi earthquake was selected as a first set in this study to perform the near-fault earthquake characteristics, which displays a pulse like velocity waveform and permanent displacement. On the other hand, another earthquake record selected at the same sites was selected to illustrate the far-field earthquake characteristics for comparison. Through the nonlinear time history analyses the values of story displacement, inter-story drift and base shear were analyzed to study the structural damage, and the results show that the near fault earthquake presents much more damage than those far field earthquake. The second objective of this paper is to compare the predictions of ductility demand by the nonlinear time history analyses with those obtained by pushover analysis procedure.