Experimental Study of the Effect of Proximity between Adjacent Buildings on their Dynamic Response

Abstract

Most of the experimental works on adjacent structures consider a short distance between them to analyze the interaction. Additionally, the majority of these studies focus on changes in the dynamic response of the buildings (e.g. acceleration, lateral displacement, or rocking) assuming that the fundamental frequency and the damping of the structures remain the same as those for the stand-alone case. This work intends to reveal the effect of distance on the interaction between adjacent structures and the effect of neighboring buildings on the dynamic properties of a structure. This was achieved by studying the dynamic response of single degree-of-freedom (SDOF) structures in a laminar box filled with sand sitting on a shake table. This study initially addressed the attenuation of the acceleration through the soil with the distance considering the structures at different distances. The second part of the study considers multiple configurations of adjacent structures to estimate the influence of the number of neighbors on the fundamental frequency and damping ratio of a subject building. An increasing fundamental frequency with an increasing number of participating structures was observed. An equation to estimate the influence of the number of neighboring buildings on the fundamental frequency of the subject structure is proposed. For the damping ratio, a considerable influence of the soil was observed. The lowest damping was obtained for an intermediate number of structures.