Traveling wave effects on a tall and narrow building: Observation and analysis

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the seismic response of a tall and narrow building, for example, a turbine building of thermal power plant, due to a traveling shear wave. It is considered that the dynamic response of the building can be affected by the spatial variance of seismic ground motion, because the building has a long-shaped foundation (43 meters wide by 343 meters long by 4 meters thick). First, analytical study was conducted using obliquely incident harmonic motion. And comparing the earthquake response observed at different points of foundation slab, it was found that the response at the end point where input wave reaches later is larger than that at the other end. From these studies, it was assured that the antisymmetric mode, which can be neglected in ordinary analysis, is excited by phase difference of input motion.