The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

Performance of tall buildings during the 1985 Mexico earthquakes

Teran-Gilmore, Amador; Bertero, Vitelmo V.

UCB/EERC-92/17, Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, 1992-12, 217 pages (705.332/1985/T37)

In these studies, the behavior of tall buildings during the 1985 Mexico earthquakes is investigated, with the main objectives of (1) identifying and formulating seismic design guidelines for tall buildings built on soft soils and (2) assessing which types of structural systems had acceptable performances. Chapter 1 provides the introduction. Chapter 2 gives a summarized overview of how the earthquake ground motions that were recorded in Mexico City were generated with special attention paid to the dynamic characteristics recorded at the SCT station. Chapter 3 deals with the statistics of damaged buildings during the earthquakes, the type of structural systems that were most vulnerable, and the dominant modes of failure. In Chapter 4, the performance of tall buildings is discussed in relation to the different seismic codes that were used for design and construction. Special attention is paid to waffle slab framed buildings. Special aspects of the observed seismic behavior of tall buildings during earthquakes are discussed in Chapter 5. Chapter 6 is devoted to lessons learned. The main results obtained are summarized in Chapter 7, where general conclusions are offered. The important lessons learned from the studies conducted on single degree-of-freedom systems are summarized; the special issues that need to be considered in the design of tall buildings on soft soils are identified; and design recommendations are presented.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/EERC/EERC-92-17.pdf (19 MB)