Poundings of seismically isolated buildings with adjacent structures

The current research work investigates, through numerical simulations, the effects of potential pounding incidences on the seismic response of a typical seismically isolated building. Such impact events may occur in some cases where the available clearance around a seismically isolated building is limited due to several practical reasons, in combination with a very strong seismic excitation, inducing large horizontal displacements at the building's base. Under these circumstances the seismically isolated building may hit against the surrounding moat wall at its base or against an adjacent building that may stand in a very close distance. A specialized software application has been developed in order to efficiently perform numerical simulations and parametric studies of this problem. The effects of certain parameters, such as the size of the separation distance, the characteristics of the adjacent structures and the earthquake characteristics, have been investigated using the developed software.