Analysis Of The Nonlinier Hysteretic Response Of an RC Building

Introduction

The Northridge earthquake having amoment magnitude Mw 6.7, Occurred on Januari 17 1994 at
4:31 a.m. Pasific standart time. Its hyposenter was about 32 km wes northwest of the downtown Los
Angeles, under the san Fernando valley, at a depth of 19 km. The earhwuake was the most damaging
earthquake to strike the greather los angeles area , California (EERI 1995)

An important set of strong motion acclerograms from more than 250 ground response sites, 400
buildings and other structures, were produced in the Northridge earthquake. An instrumented,
concrete frame building of seven stories, used as a hotel in van nuys, California, experienced violent
shaking and suffered significant damage. The recorded response of this building may provide important
information about the nonlinier hysteretic response of reinforced concrete (RC) structures to intense
earthquake shaking (EERI 1995)

This Paper present a study of the nonlinier behavior of the van nuys 7 story hotel during the
1994 northridge earthquake, by applying equivalentlinier linier and non linier system identification
methods. The building is an interesting case study for the following reasons : (i) the building was well
instrumented with several acclerograms when the earthquake occurred, (ii) the building was
locatednear the epicenter of the 1994 earhquake, (iii) The building suffered damage during prvious
earthquake events and was subsequently repaired, (iv) previous dynamic analysis of the building are
available (table 1: papageorgiou and lin, 1991)

The Van Nuys 7 story Hotel

The van nuys story hotel under investigation (see fig 1) is located on 8244 Orion Avenue in van nuys, in
the center of the san Fernando valley. The distance of the building from the epicenter of the 1994
earhquake was 7 km (EERI 1995).

Nonlinier Hysteretic Response

This building was designed in 1965, with massive shear wall in its short direction (Blume et al
1973). Besides being resisted by the shear walls, lateral force in each direction were resisted by the
interior column-slab frames and the exterior column-sprandel beam frame. The floor system was
comprised of the building consisted of concrete friction piles roughly 40 feet long. The underlying soil
was primarily fine sandy silts and silty fine sands (blume et al, 1973; papageorgious and lin 1991)

During the northidge earthquake, the building was equipped with 16 sensors ( acclerograms) as
shown in fig 1. Shaken by the 1994 northridge earthquake, the mid-rise reinforced concrete hotel was
severely damage to its concrete frame column at the base and mid elevation. The damage was
considerably more significant than that caused by the 1971 san Fernando earthquake (blume at al,1973
;EQE International 1994). Peak accleretaions recorded during the earthquake can be seen in table 1.
From the 1994 earhquake records, the total drift between the roof and the ground was about 23 cm, or
1.1 % of the building height; this large drift suggested pronounced damage to the building.

Before the 1994 earthquake , the building was struck by two major earthquakes, the 1971 san
Fernando and the 1987 whittier narrows earthquake. Peak acceleration of excitation and response of
the building during the earthquake are show in table 1 (papageorgious and lin 1991; Shakal et al 1994).
During the 1971 san Fernando earthquake, the building suffered considerable non structural damage
and minor structural damage with cracking in some beams and columns. The cracking were repaired
with epoxy glue. During the 1987 Whittier narrows earthquake, the building structure suffered no
damage (papageorgious and lin 1991).

Methods Of Analysis

In this study, both equivalent linier and non linier analysis are performed by emplying a shear
beam type planar model) Clough and Penzien 1975). For the purpose of this study, the dynamic
parameters of the fundamental mode of the structural response are identified over a 30 second time
window of the record, both in NS and Ew directions.

In the equivalent linier analysis , the 30 second time window is segmented into cycles of
oscillation ( see fig 2) . A linier analysis using the modal minimization method (beck 1979) is applied to
each of the segments, corresponding approximately) to one cycle of oscillation. Then the error between
the recorded and calculated responses of the roof, 6th floor , and 2nd floor is minimized to estimate the
optimal fundamental parameters of the structure.

Two types of nonlinier analysis methods are used : (i) the lemura-jennings type of analysis
(lamura and Jennings 1974) and (ii) a nonlinier identification technique using the deteriorating
distributed element (DDE) model proposed by Cifuentes (1985). Both approaches assume that a
structure responds.

Figure 2; Time history of relative displacement of the roof w.r.t the ground in NS and EW components
along with the interval of evaluation. A cycle of oscillation is indicated by two consecutive “o”s

To earthquake excitation, with its fundamental mode of vibration, as a single degree of freedom
oscillator. To ensure that the structural response contains only the fundamental mode, we apply low
pass filtering. This allows one to study the gross behavior of the structure using only the ground and roof
records.

In the lemura and Jennings type of analysis hysteresis loops(restoring force diagrams) are used
to estimate parameters of the structure. For each time interval, the secant stiffness is evaluated from
the slope of the hysteresis loop. This provides an estimate the corresponding damping ratio.

To better understand the stiffness degradation and strength deteriorating elements. The
parameters of the DDE model are inferred by matching the recorded restoring forcewith the calculated
one.
 Result and Discussion

The variation with time of the fundamental natural period of the structure, estimated by the
modal minimization method, is show in Fig 3. The figures disply the relationships between the period
and the amplitude of each cycle of oscillation. The estimated fundamental period indicates the
permanent stiffness degradation in both NS and EW components of the structure, as demonstrated by
the fact that period, in general, elongates as the motion progresses, with the final period almost double
the initial period.

Careful examination of fig.3 vis a vis fig 2 reveals that the occurrence of damage started just
before t = 5 second, i.e around the third cycle of oscillation in the NS component or the fourth cycle of
oscillation in the EW component. Our estimate of the time instant of the inset of damage is supported
by the following facts. In the first 5 second motion, the response nonlinearity is demonstrated by
lengthening of the period with increasing amplitude. If the structure had not suffered significant
damage, than for smaller amplitudes of vibrations its should have recovered a significant percentage of
its original stiffness. However, in the EW component (fig 3) although the amplitude of cycle 4 (o) is
smaller than that of cycle 3(o). The period of cycle 4 (o) is much longer than that of cycle 3(o). This
pattern indicates that the onset of damage to the structure occurred just before t =5 second. A similar
observation applies also for the NS componenet ; the amplitude of cycle 3 (+) is smaller than that of
cycle 2(+), but the period of bcycle 3(+) is virtually the same as that of cycle 2(+).

The periods of the structural vibration estimated using the lemura –jennings type of analysis at
every hysteresis loop (fig 4 for EW component) are for all practical purposes, very close to those
estimated with the modal minimization methos . Inferring from the estimated periods, the stiffness loss
of the structure was of the order of 60% and 70% in the NS and EW directions, respectively. The
permanent stiffness degradation which occurred in the EW component can also be viewed in the
permanent reduction of the slopes of the hysteresis loops shown in fig 4 more over the onset of damage
in the EW direction can also be observed in reference to the sudden reduction of the slope at around 5
seconds.

Conclusions

The 1994 Northridge earthquake records of the van nuys hotel supplied important information
for exploring the nonlinier hysteretic behavior of the structure during the earthquake. The dynamic
parameters of the fundamentasl mode of the structural response were identified by emplying the
equivalent linier and nonlinieranalysis to study the gross behavior of the structural vibration. Within this
study , the results of the equivalent linier and nonlinier analyses suggest the response nonliniearity of
the building motion, the onset of damage to the structure and permanent stiffness degradation of the
structure.