Dimensional analysis of earthquake-induced pounding between adjacent inelastic MDOF buildings

In this study the seismic pounding response of adjacent multi-degree-of-freedom (MDOF) buildings with bilinear inter-story resistance characteristics is investigated through dimensional analysis. The application of dimensional analysis leads to a condensed presentation of the response, and the remarkable self-similarity property for bilinear MDOF buildings with inelastic collision is uncovered. It is shown that when the response is expressed in the appropriate dimensionless form, response spectra for any intensity of the excitation collapse to a single master curve. The reduced Π set explicitly describes the interaction between the colliding structures. The effect of pounding on the MDOF building’s response is illustrated using three well-divided spectral regions (amplified, de-amplified and unaffected regions). Parametric studies are conducted to investigate the effects of the story stiffness of structures, the story stiffness ratio and mass ratio of adjacent buildings, the structural inelastic characteristics and the gap size values. Results show that (i) the influence of system stiffness ratio to the lighter and more flexible building is more significant in the first spectral region, where the maximum response of the building is amplified because of pounding; and (ii) the velocity and pounding force of the heavier and stiffer building is unexpectedly sensitive to the mass ratio of adjacent buildings.