The reports after major earthquakes indicate that the earthquake-induced pounding between insufficiently separated buildings may lead to significant damage or even total collapse of structures. An intensive study has recently been carried out on mitigation of pounding hazards so as to minimize the structural damages or prevent collisions at all. The aim of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of the method when two adjacent three-storey buildings with different (substantially different) dynamic properties are connected at each storey level by link elements (springs, dashpots or viscoelastic elements). The results of the study indicate that connecting the structures by additional link elements can be very beneficial for the lighter and more flexible building. The largest decrease in the response of the structure has been obtained for links with large stiffness or damping values, which stands for the case when two buildings are fully connected and vibrate in-phase. Moreover, by comparing the effectiveness of different types of link elements, it has been confirmed that the use of viscoelastic elements reduces the peak displacement of the structure at lower stiffness and damping values comparing to the case when spring and dashpot elements are applied alone. On the other hand, the results of the study demonstrate that applying the additional link elements does not really change the response of the heavier and stiffer building. The final conclusion of the study indicates that linking two buildings allows us to reduce the in-between gap size substantially while structural pounding can be still prevented.

The present paper investigates the coupled effect of the supporting soil flexibility and pounding between neighbouring, insufficiently separated equal height buildings under earthquake excitation. Two adjacent three-storey structures, modelled as inelastic lumped mass systems with different structural characteristics, have been considered in the study. The models have been excited using a suit of ground motions with different peak ground accelerations and recorded at different soil types. A nonlinear viscoelastic pounding force model has been employed in order to effectively capture impact forces during collisions. Spring-dashpot elements have been incorporated to simulate the horizontal and rotational movements of the supporting soil. The results of the numerical simulations, in the form of the structural nonlinear responses as well as the time-histories of energy dissipated during pounding-involved vibrations, are presented in the paper. In addition, the variation in storeys peak responses and peak dissipated energies for different gap sizes are also shown and comparisons are made with the results obtained for colliding buildings with fixed-base supports. Observations regarding the incorporation of the soil-structure interaction and its effect on the responses obtained are discussed. The results of the study indicate that the soil-structure interaction significantly influences the pounding-involved responses of equal height buildings during earthquakes, especially the response of the lighter and more flexible structure. It has been found that the soil flexibility decreases storey peak displacements, peak impact forces and peak energies dissipated during vibrations, whereas it usually leads to the increases in the peak accelerations at each storey level.

In this paper, logical analysis of data (LAD) is used to predict the seismic response of building structures employing the captured dynamic responses. In order to prepare the data, computational simulations using a single degree of freedom (SDOF) building model under different ground motion records are carried out. The selected excitation records are real and of different peak ground accelerations (PGA). The sensitivity of the seismic response in terms of displacements of floors to the variation in earthquake characteristics, such as soil class, characteristic period, and time step of records, peak ground displacement, and peak ground velocity, have also been considered. The dynamic equation of motion describing the building model and the applied earthquake load are presented and solved incrementally using the Runge-Kutta method. LAD then finds the characteristic patterns which lead to forecast the seismic response of building structures. The accuracy of LAD is compared to that of an artificial neural network (ANN), since the latter is the most known machine learning technique. Based on the conducted study, the proposed LAD model has been proven to be an efficient technique to learn, simulate, and blindly predict the dynamic response behaviour of building structures subjected to earthquake loads.

This research aims to get some insight into the influence of supporting soil on the seismic response of base-isolated buildings impacting with the neighbouring retaining wall. Two ground motion records from two different regions are used as excitations. A nonlinear impact model is incorporated to capture the pounding force. In addition, an efficient discrete-element model is applied to represent the rotational and horizontal movements of the soil. The dynamic response of the isolated building resting on different flexible base soils and hits the adjacent abutment and the corresponding response of the building resting on a rigid base soil are presented. Analysis of the results expressed in the form of time-history and peak response for various values of structural natural periods, gap sizes, and base-isolated periods is carried out. The results show a considerable influence of the simultaneous effect of base-isolated pounding and base soil flexibility on the dynamic response of isolated buildings during earthquakes.