Influence of the soil-structure interaction on the design of steel-braced building foundation

The modeling and analysis of the superstructure and the foundation for the seismic lateral loads are traditionally done separately. This assumption is an important issue in the design/rehabilitate procedures especially for the short period structures, i.e. steel braced or shear wall systems, which may result to a conservative design. By using more advance procedures, i.e. nonlinear static method, and the incorporation of the soil-structure interaction (SSI), the seismic demand in the lateral resisting system decreases and the design will become more economic. This paper includes an investigation about the influence of the SSI effect on the design of the steel-braced building foundation. The presented example is a three-bay three-storey steel braced frame. Three design methods based on the FEMA 356 guideline and the UBC 97 code are taken in to consideration. The three methods are: (1) linear static analysis based on the UBC 97 code assuming the fixed based condition; (2) linear static analysis based on the FEMA 356 guideline assuming the fixed based condition; and (3) nonlinear static analysis assuming both fixed and flexible based assumptions. The results show that the influence of the SSI on the input demand of the short period building foundations is significant and the foundation design based on the linear static method with the fixed base assumption is so conservative. A simple method is proposed to take the SSI effect in to consideration in the linear static procedure with the fixed base assumption, which is a common method for the engineers. The advantage of this proposed method is the simplicity and the applicability for the engineering purposes.