Effects of the near-fault acceleration and non-acceleration pulses on the inter-story drift ratio of the building structures

In this study, effects of two types of velocity pulses: visible acceleration pulses (accpulses) and succession of high-frequency one-sided acceleration spikes (nonaccpulses) are investigated on inter-story drift ratio of multi-story buildings. For this purpose, it is considered a simplified model of multi-story buildings as a continuous cantilever beam including a combination of flexural cantilever beam and shear cantilever beam. Forty-one acc-pulse motions and 38 non-acc-pulse motions are used to calculate the maximum inter-story drift ratio (MIDR) of multi-story buildings with different lateral resisting systems and fundamental periods that ranges from 0.05 to 10 s. The results showed that in the intermediate period (1 < T < 3.5 s) building structures, the MIDRs obtained from the accpulse motions were about two times larger than nonaccpulse motions. In addition, under accpulses motion, the height-wise location of MIDR (HMID) in the flexural-type structural system is very sensitive to the period of vibration. Therefore, with the increase of the fundamental period of the building structure, the HMID moved towards the lower half of the building.