| Abstract: | The effect of the base mat flexibility on seismic soil-structure interaction is studied for an axisymmetric reactor building on a soft and a stiff soil. As a preliminary step, the dynamic response of a massless flexible circular plate with two rigid concentric walls, through which the plate is loaded, is analysed. The response of the plate is found to depend on the plate flexibility, the load distribution and the frequency of excitation. For practical, in-phase load distributions, the response of the flexible plate is close to that of a rigid plate at low frequencies, but deviates at high frequencies. Including the flexibility of the mat has hardly any effect on the frequencies and damping of the fundamental rocking and vertical modes of the reactor building. This is the case for soft and stiff soil conditions. However, the flexibility of the mat strongly affects the first and higher structural deformation modes. In both cases the amount of energy dissipated in the soil is a significant percentage of the total dissipation, and is essentially unaffected by the mat flexibility. |
