ABSTRACT
Buildings constructed in seismic prone areas must satisfy the limit state design criteria and inter-storey drift limitations. In recent years, importance of considering soil-structure interaction in the seismic analysis and design of building frames was addressed by various researchers. This study aims to investigate the effects of soil-pile-structure interaction on the behavior of moment resisting frames resting on sand. Numerical analysis was performed on a 10 storey midrise reinforced concrete building using a finite element program PLAXIS3D. The base shear was distributed to all storeys by using equivalent static method. Denseness of soil and spacing of piles were considered as parameters for the analysis. The elastic seismic response of the building in terms of storey displacement and inter-storey drifts was observed. The normalized storey lateral displacement and inter-storey drift values with fixed base structure were evaluated and presented in this paper. The results indicate that the inter-storey drift and storey lateral displacement are affected significantly by the considered parameters. Thus it is pertinent for the designers and practitioners to consider soil-pile-structure interaction for the analysis and design of building frames.
