RESEARCH ARTICLE


Seismic Ductility Reduction of Flexural-type Structures with Vertical Irregularities



Weifeng Zhao*, Xiaoquan Hu, Zhilin Long
College of Civil Engineering and Mechanics, Xiangtan University, Xiangtan 411105, China


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Creative Commons License
©Zhao et al.; Licensee Bentham Open.

open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-NC 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode), which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the College of Civil Engineering and Mechanics, Xiangtan University, Xiangtan 411105, China; Tel: +86-15073275191; E-mail: weifengzhjing@126.com


Abstract

Seismic ductility reduction factors for flexural-type structures with vertical irregularities subjected to pulse-like and non-pulse-like ground motions are investigated in this paper. By establishing various multi-node flexural cantilever-column models, the ductility reduction factor of vertically irregular structures is studied by modifying the ductility reduction factor of irregular structures. The effects of various factors such as ductility level, irregular ratio and pulse-like earthquake excitation on modification coefficient are also explored. The analysis results reveal that: 1) the modification coefficient decreases with smaller irregularity ratio; 2) ductility reduction factors for vertically irregular structures are significantly smaller than those of regular structures; 3) ductility level exerts a certain influence on ductility reduction factor without an obvious trend; and 4) the modification coefficient under pulse-like excitation is smaller than those from non-pulse-like motions and the influence of pulse-like earthquake is coupled with irregularity ratio. This paper concludes with the statistical outcomes based on average of results and recommends modified factors for practice uses.

Keywords: Ductility reduction factor, flexural-type structure, modification factor, vertical irregularity.