Effect of earthquake directionality on the seismic response of RC wall buildings

Abstract

Reinforced concrete (RC) wall buildings are widely used for their proven seismic resilience, as evidenced in past earthquakes. To understand their behavior, extensive research has been conducted using both experimental and numerical methods. Despite these efforts, the impact of earthquake directionality on these structures deserves further exploration. Addressing this gap, this paper examines the effects of earthquake directionality on three RC wall buildings. Eleven ground motion records from the far-field suite of the FEMA P695 were selected, rotated, and used to perform incremental dynamic analyses of the three buildings in OpenSeesPy. The buildings seismic performance was evaluated in terms of the roof drift ratio, axial load ratio, and bending moments. Additionally, a novel performance metric, namely the MaxRotEDPpp is introduced to assess the building's response. The results show that the direction of ground motions has a significant impact on engineering demand parameters and in the probability of exceedance for different thresholds, which can double compared to non-rotated ground motions. © 2024 The Authors