Seismic Performance of a 30-Story Building Located on Soft Soil and Designed According to UBC 1991

Researchers and practitioners interested in the seismic design of buildings have expressed serious concerns about the reliability and rationality of present building code methodology for the Earthquake-Resistant Design (EQRD) of tall buildings, particularly those to be built on deep soft soil. Therefore it was decided to conduct the studies reported herein, which have the
following main objective: to assess the adequacy of the U.S. Uniform Building Code (UBC) methodology for tall buildings on soft soil.

To achieve the above main objective, it was decided to design a tall building on soft soil using the UBC methodology, and then to analyze its performance under the critical Earthquake Ground Motions (EQGMs) that could occur at the building site. First, a 30-story RC building with identical configuration, structural system and structural layout as those of a building that has been designed and built in Japan was selected. The 30-story building, assumed to be located in the San Francisco Bay Area, is constituted by a three-dimensional assemblage of Reinforced Concrete (RC) special moment-resisting frames. The following studies that were conducted are reported herein.