The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

Seismic performance of a 30-story building located on soft soil and designed according to UBC 1991

Teran-Gilmore, Amador; Bertero, Vitelmo V.

UCB/EERC-93/04, Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, 1993-02, 356 pages (620/T372/1993)

The studies reported were conducted to assess the adequacy of the U.S. Uniform Building Code (UBC) methodology for tall buildings on soft soil. To achieve the main objective, it was decided to design a tall building on soft soil using the UBC methodology, and then to analyze its performance under the critical earthquake ground motions (EQGMs) that could occur at the building site. A 30-story reinforced concrete building identical to one designed and built in Japan was selected. The 30-story building, assumed to be located in the San Francisco Bay Area, is constituted of a three-dimensional assemblage of special moment-resisting frames. In addition, a comparison is made of the seismic performance of three 30-story buildings with exactly the same structural layout, but designed according to the American practice, Japanese practice, and a newly developed Conceptual Design Methodology philosophy.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/EERC/EERC-93-04.pdf (23 MB)