Seismic demands on acceleration-sensitive nonstructural components using recorded building response data - Case study

This paper investigates seismic demands on acceleration-sensitive nonstructural components using building responses measured on two multi-story reinforced concrete (RC) buildings during a variety of strong earthquake events. The measured data are unique in the sense that they incorporate the building responses at different levels of nonlinearity. The seismic demands on acceleration-sensitive nonstructural components using the recorded responses of the instrumented buildings are evaluated and compared with current code provisions. It is observed that the seismic demands of acceleration-sensitive nonstructural components are sensitive to building nonlinear effects as a result of the building period elongation and the variations of other modal parameters. It is demonstrated that improved seismic demand estimations can be achieved using modal analysis procedures incorporating the modal characteristics of buildings at the corresponding level of nonlinearity.