Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 22 (2002) 11751182 www.elsevier.

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Site effect on vulnerability of high-rise shear wall buildings under near and far eld earthquakes
Z.P. Wena, Y.X. Hua, K.T. Chaub,*
b a Institute of Geophysics, China Seismological Bureau, Beijing, Peoples Republic of China Department of Civil and Structural Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Yuk Choi Road, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong, Peoples Republic of China

Abstract Worldwide experience repeatedly shows that damages in structures caused by earthquakes are highly dependent on site condition and epicentral distance. In this paper, a 21-storey shear wall-structure built in the 1960s in Hong Kong is selected as an example to investigate these two effects. Under various design earthquake intensities and for various site conditions, the fragility curves or damage probability matrix of such building is quantied in terms of the ductility factor, which is estimated from the ratio of storey yield shear to the inter-storey seismic shear. For high-rise buildings, a higher probability of damage is obtained for a softer site condition, and damage is more severe for far eld earthquakes than for near eld earthquakes. For earthquake intensity of VIII, the probability of complete collapse (P ) increases from 1 to 24% for near eld earthquakes and from 1 to 41% for far eld earthquakes if the building is moved form a rock site to a site consisting a 80 m thick soft clay. For intensity IX, P increases from 6 to 69% for near eld earthquake and from 14 to 79% for far eld earthquake if the building is again moved form rock site to soft soil site. Therefore, site effect is very important and not to be neglected. Similar site and epicentral effects should also be expected for other types of high-rise structures. q 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Seismic vulnerability; Damage probability matrix; Site conditions; Epicentral distance; Distant earthquake; Near earthquake

1. Introduction It has been repeatedly demonstrated by many strong earthquakes, including the 1906 San Francisco, the 1957 and 1985 Mexico City, the 1967 Caracas, the 1976 Tangshan, the 1989 Loma Prieta, the 1994 Northridge and 1995 Kobe earthquakes, that damages of buildings depend strongly on the local site response. As early as 1906, during the great San Francisco earthquake it was realized that damage was more severe at downtown situated on a soft ground than the surrounding areas [1]. The 1985 Mexico City earthquake caused only moderate damages in the vicinity of the Pacic coast of Mexico, but caused extensive damages some 350 km away in Mexico City. Structural damages in Mexico City were also highly selective. Large parts of the city experienced no damage while areas underlain by 38 50 m of soft soil suffered pronounced damages [2]. During the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the epicentral intensity is only VIII in the modied Mercalli scale (MMI), while the intensity is IX in some soft site in San Francisco, which locates more than 100 km away.
* Corresponding author. Fax: 852-2334-6389. E-mail address: cektchau@polyu.edu.hk (K.T. Chau).

In short, the fact that earthquakes caused extensive damage in certain areas, and relatively little damage in others, suggests that local site effects are important [2]. In addition, evidences from many earthquakes repeatedly illustrate that damage phenomenon in the near eld and far eld are quite different. For example, the 1952 Kern earthquake caused heavier damages to one-storey or two-storey brick buildings than to multi-storey buildings in the epicentral areas, while caused heavier damages to ve or above multi-storey buildings than to low-rise buildings in Los Angeles about 150 km away [3]. Thus, the damages are highly selective in terms of both the natural frequency of structures and the frequency content of ground shaking. Although effects of local site condition and epicentral distance on building damage have been conrmed by many earthquakes and have been investigated extensively [4 7], these local site effects have not been incorporated into vulnerability analysis of buildings through the use of damage probability matrix (DPM) or fragility curves. To incorporate the local site effects on the damages of existing buildings, subjective expert opinions are often being used. As remarked by Hu et al. [8], Medvedev [9] was perhaps the rst to summarize systematically the effect of site

0267-7261/02/$ - see front matter q 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 2 6 7 - 7 2 6 1 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 1 4 5 - 8

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conditions on building damages. On the basis of eld data, including the shear wave velocity and the depth of water table, he correlated structural damages to the site condition. For the 1967 Caracas earthquake, Seed et al. [10] correlated statistically different types of structural damages to the local soil conditions. Kuribayashi et al. [11] related the probability of damage of wooden houses during the 1948 Fukui earthquake to the local ground condition. Cochrane and Schaad [12] presented a simple method to consider the effect of soil condition on vulnerability of buildings by either increasing or decreasing the design intensity. By applying this method, Chavez [13] analyzed the effect of local geology on the seismic vulnerability of the metropolitan zone of Guadalajara, Mexico. More recently, Murao et al. [14] incorporated the site effects by using fragility curves or DPM formulated based on the damage survey data from the 1995 Kobe earthquake; and Mucciarelli et al. [15] incorporated the site effects by using microtremor measurements. In reality, the local site condition and epicentral distance may inuence the magnitude as well as the frequency content of strong ground motions. This paper attempts to analyze the combined effects of the soil condition and epicentral distance on the vulnerability of a typical reinforced concrete frame/shear wall building in Hong Kong by proposing the DPM for various conditions. More specically, we will use a multi-degree-of-freedom lump mass system to represent a 21-storey reinforced concrete building in Hong Kong. The shear force will be compared to the yield shear to estimate the ductility, and subsequently the damage states of the building.

2. Formulation for damage probability matrix 2.1. Input ground motion As mentioned in Section 1, the importance of site condition and epicentral distance on local ground motions is well recognized. In this study, however, no topography and basin effect is incorporated. In addition, the effect of duration of strong ground motion is not included. Instead, we adopt the site- and earthquake-dependent design response spectra of the Chinese seismic code GBJ 11-89 [16] as our seismic input. As shown in Fig. 1, the seismic coefcient a is expressed in spectrum form, and depends on the natural period of the site Tg and the site condition. The site conditions can be classied into four categories, namely SC I, SC II, SC III, and SC IV; and they correspond to a stiff site, a medium-stiff site, a medium-soft site and a soft site. The exact denitions are given in GBJ 11-89. Typically, SC I is a rock site; SC II corresponds to a site with less than 9 m thick of stiff soil with shear wave speed vs . 500 m/s; SC III corresponds to a site with either a 3 80 m thick of mediumstiff soil with 500 m/s $ vs . 250 m/s or a medium-soft soil (250 m/s $ vs . 140 m/s) of more than 80 m thick; and SC IV corresponds to a site with a soft soil with vs # 140 m/s of more than 80 m thick. The site fundamental period Tg can be estimated from Table 1 as a function of site category as well as whether the design earthquake is far eld or near eld, ranging from 0.2 to 0.86 s. The maximum seismic coefcient amax given in Fig. 1 depends on the design level of earthquake intensity. The values of amax corresponding to MMI VI, VII, VIII, IX and X can be taken as 0.12, 0.23, 0.45, 0.90 and 1.80, respectively.

Fig. 1. Design spectra of GBJ 11-89 for different site conditions at 5% damping. The natural periods of the site and the structure are denoted by Tg and T, respectively, while the site categories I, II, III, and IV are denoted by SC I, SC II, SC III, and SC IV, respectively.

Z.P. Wen et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 22 (2002) 11751182 Table 1 Characteristic period of the site Tg (s) in terms of site category (SC I, SC II, SC III, and SC IV) and for both near and far eld earthquakes (after GBJ 11-89) Epicentral distance Tg SC I Near-earthquake Far-earthquake 0.20 0.25 SC II 0.30 0.40 SC III 0.40 0.55 SC IV 0.65 0.85

1177

can be approximated by the following empirical formula [17]: H2 T 0:33 0:00069 p 3 B 3

where T is given in second, H and B are the height and length along the shaking direction of the building (in m). 2.3. Yield shear coefcient of each storey For frame structure with shear walls, the yield storey shear can be estimated as [16]: Qyx 0:25Fc Awx 4

2.2. Seismic storey shear By applying the equivalent lateral force method, each level of a building can be modeled by one lateral degree-offreedom along the shaking direction. The lateral force applied at level i can be calculated from Ref. [16]: GH Fi X n i i aGeq 1 2 dn GH j1 j j 1

where Hi and Gi are the height and weight at level i, respectively, n is the total number of stories of the building, a is the spectrum parameter given in Fig. 1, dn is the additional seismic action coefcient given in Fig. 2, and Geq is the total equivalent weight of a structure (or 85% of the total weight of the building). The coefcient dn is introduced to account approximately for the higher mode contributions, and such approach is essentially the same as those used in the UBC-85 of the USA. The shear force Qx at the x storey is then given by summing all lateral seismic forces above that storey, i.e. Qx
n X ix

where Fc is compressive strength of concrete and Awx is sectional area of shear walls which are parallel to the earthquake action in storey x. Note that this yield storey shear will not be constant at different levels if the building is not uniform along the height. This formula is similar to those adopted in Japan [18]. That is, the yield storey shear should be independent of the frequency content of the applied seismic forces, and the ultimate strength is assumed proportional to the area of the shear wall aligned along the direction of the seismic loads. The seismic resistant capacity of a high-rise building can be estimated by a yield shear coefcient of storey dened as: R Qyx Qx 5

Fi aGeq dn

where Fi is given in Eq. (1). In using Figs. 1 and 2, the fundamental period T of a building is needed, and for RC frame/shear wall buildings T

where Qx is the seismic shear in the x storey given in Eq. (2) and Qyx is yield shear of the same storey given in Eq. (4). Many studies show that, in the case of multi-storey frame structure with shear walls, non-linear deformation will concentrate at the weakest stories [19,20], which correspond to the minimum R in Eq. (5). Note also that in the calculation of Qx, the dynamic characteristics of the ground motions have been taken into account, approximately. Thus, the yield shear coefcient given in Eq. (5) relates not only to the strength of the structure, but also to the characteristics of the seismic input. 2.4. Probability density of the ductility factor The maximum storey ductility factor is a key parameter indicating building damage. The storey with minimum yield shear coefcient experiences the maximum deformation and attains the maximum ductility factor. Based upon 3120 cases of elastic plastic seismic analyses of different types of multi-degree-of-freedom structures subject to 31 real seismic records, Yin et al. [21] proposed the following formula for the maximum mean ductility m0 of a frame structure with shear wall: 8 exp2:612R p < R#1 R 6 m0 : 1 R.1 R

Fig. 2. A plot of the additional seismic action coefcient dn at the top level of the structure versus the structural period T. The natural period of the site is denoted by Tg.

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where R is the minimum yield storey shear coefcient calculated from Eq. (5). This result for ductility factor is comparable to the formula by Veletson and Newmark [22] derived from the energy principle [23]. This empirical formula can further be rened by adding correction factors Ci i 1; 2; ; 5 to the maximum mean ductility factor:  X  7 m  m0 1 Ci When sectional stiffness is non-uniform along the height, C1 0.2; when the plan of building is non-symmetric, C2 0.2; when the quality of the building is sub-standard, C3 0.2; when the building design complies with requirement of TJ11-78 (Chinese seismic code for industrial and civil buildings, 1978), C4 2 0.25; and, nally, when building design complies with TJ11-74 (Chinese seismic code for industrial and civil buildings, 1974) but not TJ11-78, C5 2 0.2. Otherwise, we can set Ci 0 i 1; 2; ; 5. Naturally, a higher maximum mean ductility factor m  implies a more severely damaged building. But, due to the uncertainties involved in the estimation of seismic hazard as well as in the analysis of structural response, the ductility as well as the damage state is better represented in terms of probability distribution function. In particular, both the peak ground acceleration and seismic capacity of structures are often found satisfying a lognormal probability distribution versus the input ground parameters [14,24 27]. Indeed, by analyzing 3120 cases of elastic plastic seismic responses, Yin [24] suggested the following lognormal distribution for m " # 1 ln m 2 l2 8 f m p exp 2 2j 2 2pjm where ! 9

Fig. 3. A schematic diagram illustrating a typical plot of the base shear Q against the ductility factor m. The segments of the curve representing various damage states D1, D2, D3, D4 and D5 (corresponding to no damage, slight damage, moderate damage, extensive damage and complete damage) are indicated. The thresholds of the ductility factor corresponding to the onset of slight damage, moderate damage, extensive damage and complete damage are 1.0, 1.5, 3 and 5, respectively.

l ln m 2

1 2 2j ;

s2 j ln 1 2 m 
2

In these equations, m  and s are, respectively, the maximum mean value estimated from Eq. (7) and the standard deviation of the ductility factor of the stories. In this study, we assume that the main uncertainty of the ductility factor comes from uncertainty in the seismic hazard. Thus, the value of s=m  is taken from that of the earthquake intensity as 1.25 [28]. Note that this ductility distribution depends on the structural characteristics as well as the input ground motions through the calculation of m : 2.5. Damage probability matrix Fig. 3 shows a typical plot of the base shear Q versus the ductility factor. Five damage states, D1, D2, D3, D4 and D5, are assumed, corresponding to undamaged, slightly damaged, moderately damaged, extensively damaged, and completely damaged states, respectively. For frame

structure with shear walls, the threshold ductility factors for the onset of slightly damaged, moderately damaged, extensively damaged and completely damaged states are 1.0, 1.5, 3.0 and 5, respectively [24]. These values are empirical constants and may vary from one type of building to another. Because of the randomness of ground motions and seismic responses, the earthquake damages are modeled as probabilistic phenomena in order to closely reect its scattering nature of occurrence. Damage probability distribution for various damage states of a specic building is represented as the DPM. It describes the probability that the structure is in a particular damage state for a given level of ground shaking. Using the threshold values of the ductility factor as integration limits, the probability of various damage states for a given ground motion can be obtained by integrating Eq. (8). In Section 3, a particular structure will be used as an example to illustrate the combined effect of the soil condition and epicentral distance on DPM for various design intensities.

3. DPM for a 21-storey RC frame/shear wall building One particular 21-storey RC frame/shear wall building of Mei Foo Sun Chuen is chosen for our study because Mei Foo Sun Chuen is one of the largest private housing estates in Hong Kong. More importantly, the structural scheming for Mei Foo Sun Chuen is also similar to those used in other newer residential buildings built recently in Hong Kong. There are a total of 102 building blocks in Mei Foo Sun Chuen, and all of them are of the same height and of similar structural scheming. The whole estate was built in eight different phases on a reclaimed land in the 1960s and 1970s.

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The building that we choose for the present study is the 5-7 Humbert Street of Phase 5, as shown in Fig. 4(a). The lower two levels are car parks and the upper 19 levels are residential stories, and these two levels are connected at the podium level. There is a sudden change in the building stiffness from the upper to the lower levels. The structural plan of the columns and shear walls for a typical storey of the upper level is shown in Fig. 4(b), while the two car park levels shown in Fig. 4(c). The storey height and area of storey at various levels are compiled in Table 2. The height of the building H is taken as 55.75 m while the length is taken as 32 m, and the corresponding natural period of the structure estimated from Eq. (3) is about 1 s. For our parametric studies, the building is assumed to rest on different site conditions SC I, SC II, SC III, and SC IV, and subject to various levels of seismic intensities (VI, VII, VIII, IX and X of a return period of 475 years). Both far eld and near eld earthquake excitations are considered. The self-weight of the building at various level is calculated based on a distributed load of 1.2 ton/m2. Although the structure is neither perfectly symmetric nor perfectly uniform along the height, its stiffness variation along the height is considered not too drastic. Also noting the fact that the building is about 30 years P old, thus a combined total correction of 0.25 is applied to Ci in Eq. (7). Applying formulas (1) (7), the maximum mean ductility m  for the building subject to various earthquake intensities, site conditions and near or far eld earthquake is tabulated in Table 3. Table 2 also complies the storey yield shear at various levels calculated according to Eq. (4). As expected, m  increases with the intensity. In addition, m  is larger for far eld earthquakes than for near eld earthquakes, and this agrees with the eld observation that high-rise building is more responsive to long period far eld ground motion. The integration of different segment of ductility curves leads to the probability of various damage states (Fig. 3). For various site conditions, Table 4 tabulates the DPM of the selected

Table 2 The storey height, area and yield shear for the selected frame-shear wall building from Mei Foo Sun Chuen Storey no. 20 11 19 10 9 6 8 4 5 3 Podium Upper parking Ground parking Storey height (m) 2.65 2.65 2.54 2.77 2.65 2.65 2.74 2.71 2.59 2.59 Area of storey (m2) 548.1 548.1 548.1 548.1 548.1 548.1 548.1 882.2 940.4 907.1 Qyx (MN) 5.08 18.9 18.9 24.3 24.3 29.2 29.2 27.4 35.3 38.1

Fig. 4. (a) A photograph of the selected 21-storey RC frame-shear wall building in Mei Foo Sun Chuen used in the vulnerability analysis; (b) the plan section of the columns and shear walls of the building shown in (a); and (c) an enlargement of the rst two levels of parking.

building for the ve damage states (D1, D2, D3, D4 and D5) subject to intensity levels from VI to X under both far eld and near eld earthquakes. Table 4 demonstrates that the distribution of the ductility factor and the DPM depend strongly on the site condition and on whether the earthquake is near or far eld. For the selected building, Table 4 shows that a higher probability of damage is obtained for a softer site condition. For intensities VI and VII, the site condition is not very signicant for both near and far eld earthquakes. For earthquake intensity of VIII, the probability of complete collapse (P ) increases from 1 to 24% for near eld earthquake and from 1 to 41% for far eld earthquake if the building is moved form a rock site (SC I) to a site of 80 m thick of soft clay (SC IV). For intensity IX, P increases from 6 to 69% for near eld earthquake and from 14 to 79% for far eld earthquake if the building is moved form SC I site to SC IV site. For typical reclamation sites in Hong Kong consisting of 40 m of ll, alluvium, and marine deposit, the site condition can be approximated by SC II; and thus, the probabilities of structures suffering from moderate damage to complete collapse are 1, 18, 70 and 96% for near eld earthquake, and 9, 26, 85 and 98% for far eld earthquake for earthquake intensity of VII, VIII, IX, X, respectively. Therefore, site effect is very important and not to be neglected. In short, a high-rise RC building resting on a soft site is more conducive to damages than to rest on a rock site, as it has been demonstrated in the case of 1985 Mexico City earthquake. In addition, high-rise building is more conducive to far eld earthquake than to near eld earthquake. It is because far eld seismic ground motions are richer in higher period content than the near eld seismic motions. This conclusion also agrees with the eld observations during large earthquakes. Another popular way to present the DPM is to plot the exceeding probability for a particular damage state (i.e. probability of a specied damage level will be exceeded) versus the input seismic intensity as vulnerability or fragility curves, as used in Shinozuka et al. [29] and Karim and

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Table 3 The maximum mean storey ductility factor versus the design intensity (VI, VII, VIII, IX, and X) for various site conditions (SC I, SC II, SC III, and SC IV) and for both near and far eld earthquakes Intensity The maximum mean ductility factor of storey m  SC I Near VI VII VIII IX X 0.185 0.354 0.688 1.7 7.75 Far 0.226 0.433 0.848 2.875 10.6 SC II Near 0.263 0.5 0.978 4.00 13.0 Far 0.34 0.65 1.306 6.65 17.9 SC III Near 0.34 0.65 1.306 6.65 17.9 Far 0.445 0.855 2.79 10.45 24.05 SC IV Near 0.519 0.994 3.95 12.86 34.88 Far 0.663 1.1 6.375 17.36 34.16

Yamazaki [30] for bridges. But such fragility curves will not be given here as they can be generated readily from Table 4. Although only one particular high-rise building has been employed as an example in this study, we expect that similar conclusions can also be obtained of other high-rise buildings in Hong Kong. We also expect that the results of this paper should not be very sensitive to the particular base shear method or seismic code being adopted. The results in this paper indicate that damages of the highrise buildings are more severe in soft site under far eld earthquakes than in stiff site under near eld earthquakes. This is consistent with commonly observed phenomenon

of highly selective-damage. Tall exible structures (with a long natural period) on soft soil are more conductive to damage under far eld large earthquakes than on rock site under near eld earthquakes. On the contrary, stiff low-rise buildings appear to be vulnerable to earthquake when they sit on rm soil under near eld moderate earthquakes. Therefore, the damages are highly selective in terms of the natural frequencies of structures and of ground shaking. Physically, large earthquake is more capable of producing longer-period ground motions than smaller earthquake does. As seismic waves travel along the Earth crust from a fault, their higher-frequency components are scattered and

Table 4 DPM in probability of damage (P ) versus intensity for site conditions SC I, SC II, SC III and SC IV (Near: near eld earthquakes; Far: far eld earthquakes) Damage state Probability of damage (%) by intensity VI Near SC I D1 D2 D3 D4 D5 SC II D1 D2 D3 D4 D5 SC III D1 D2 D3 D4 D5 SC IV D1 D2 D3 D4 D5 Far VII Near Far VIII Near Far IX Near Far X Near Far

98 2 0 0 0 97 2 1 0 0 95 3 2 0 0 87 7 5 1 0

98 2 0 0 0 95 3 2 0 0 90 6 3 1 0 81 9 8 2 0

94 4 2 0 0 95 4 1 0 0 82 9 7 2 0 68 14 13 3 2

91 5 3 1 0 82 9 7 2 0 74 12 10 3 1 65 14 15 4 2

81 9 8 1 1 70 12 13 4 1 58 16 17 6 3 18 12 28 18 24

75 11 10 3 1 58 16 17 6 3 28 16 27 15 14 8 8 23 20 41

48 16 22 8 6 18 12 28 18 24 7 8 21 22 42 2 2 12 15 69

27 16 26 17 14 7 8 21 22 42 3 5 13 19 60 1 1 7 12 79

5 6 20 20 49 2 2 12 16 68 0 2 7 11 80 0 1 2 4 93

3 3 15 18 61 0 2 7 11 80 0 1 4 8 87 0 0 2 5 93

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dissipated more rapidly than their lower-frequency components (see Ref. [31] or g. 3.23 of Ref. [2]). As a result, the frequency content also changes with the epicentral distance, and, thus, far eld earthquakes are richer in longerperiod motions. Therefore, tall exible buildings with longer natural period are more vibrant when subject to far eld earthquakes.

The authors would like to thank Mr Philip Kwok the Buildings Department of Hong Kong SAR Government in providing building information.

References
[1] Wood HO. Distribution of apparent intensity in San Francisco. The California earthquake of April 18, 1906. Report of the state earthquake investigation commission, vol. 1. Washington, DC: Carnegie Institute of Washington; 1908. p. 220 245. [2] Kramer SL. Geotechnical earthquake engineering. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall; 1996. [3] Hu YX. Earthquake engineering. Beijing: Seismological Press; 1988. in Chinese. [4] Aki K. Local site effects on weak and strong ground motion. Tectonophysics 1993;218(1):93 111. [5] Finn WDL. Geotechnical engineering aspects of microzonation. Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Seismic Zonation, vol. I. Oakland, CA: Earthquake Engineering Research Institute; 1991. p. 199259. [6] Bard PY. Effects of surface geology on ground motion: recent results and remaining issues. Proceedings of the 10th European Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Vienna, 1995. p. 30523. [7] International Association for Earthquake Engineering (IAEE). A word list Earthquake Resistant Regulations, Tokyo, Japan; 1996. [8] Hu YX, Lui SC, Dong W. Earthquake engineering. London: E & FN Spon; 1996. [9] Medvedev SV. Engineering seismology. Moscow: National Publisher of Literatures on Structure, Architecture and Architectural Materials; 1962. in Russian. [10] Seed HB, Idriss IM, Dezfulian H. Relationships between soil conditions and building damage in the Caracas earthquake of July 29, 1967. Technical Report of Earthquake Engineering Center, No. EERC70-2, February 1970. [11] Kuribayashi E, Hadate T, Saeli M. Effects of subground conditions to earthquake damage ratios of wooden dwelling houses in the Fukui earthquake of 1948. Proceedings of the Fifth Japan Earthquake Engineering symposium, 1978. Tokyo: Architectural Institute of Japan; November 1978. p. 138390, Paper no. 174. [12] Cochrane SW, Schaad WH. Assessment of earthquake vulnerability of buildings. Proceedings of 10th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Madrid, Spain, July 1992. p. 497 502. [13] Chavez M. Impact of the local geology on the seismic vulnerability of the metropolitan zone of Guadalajara, Mexico. Proceedings of the 12th World Conference of Earthquake Engineering, Auckland, New Zealand, 2000 (CD-ROM). Paper no. 1600. [14] Murao O, Tanaka H, Yamazaki F, Wakamatsu K. Method for building collapse risk assessment based on actual damage data due to the 1995 Kobe earthquake. Bull ERS 2000;33:12938. [15] Mucciarelli M, Contri P, Monachesi G, Calvano G, Gallipoli M. An empirical method to assess the seismic vulnerability of existing buildings using the HVSR technique. Pure Appl Geophys 2001;158: 2635 47. [16] Chinese Academy of Building Research, Seismic Design Code of buildings and structures (GBJ 11-89). Beijing, China: Chinese Academy of Building Research; 1989. English edition. [17] Guo YY. Seismic design of buildings and structures. Beijing: High Education Press; 1990. in Chinese. [18] Nakano Y. A technical guide for temporary restoration of RC school buildings damage by 921 Chi-Chi earthquake. Bull ERS 2000;33: 13951. [19] Newmark NM, Rosenblueth EA. Fundamentals of earthquake engineering. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall; 1971.

4. Conclusion In this paper, the site and epicentral distance effects on the vulnerability of high-rise buildings were incorporated into the DPM. This is the rst time that these effects are incorporated into the DPM following a systematic and analytical approach, instead of using a more subjective expert adjustment approach. More specically, we have used a multi-degree-of-freedom lump mass system to represent a typical high-rise reinforced concrete building in Hong Kong. The seismic forces at each storey level are calculated using the base shear method. The effects of the site condition and the natural period of the building are automatically incorporated by using a site- and earthquakesource-dependent design response spectrum. In addition, the chosen seismic input parameters also depend on whether the design earthquake is near eld or far eld. This seismic force is then compared to the yield shear of each storey, such that a storey yield shear coefcient can be obtained. This coefcient is subsequently used to estimate the maximum mean ductility of the building through the use of a simple empirical relation. The adjusted maximum mean ductility is then used to form a lognormal distribution of the ductility factor. By integrating these distributions, fragility curves or DPM of the building under various types and levels of seismic input have been obtained. The results in Table 4 show that damage for high-rise buildings is more severe for far eld earthquake than for near eld earthquake because of its richer low frequency contents. Therefore, high-rise buildings on soft soil and subject to far eld earthquakes are more conducive damages than on rock site and subject to near eld earthquakes. This is consistent with commonly observed eld phenomenon of highly selectivedamage. We expect that the same conclusion can also be drawn even when we use another high-rise building and follow a slightly different analytical method. In conclusion, both the effects of site condition and epicentral distance should be incorporated analytically into the calculation of DPM or fragility curves. Site and epicentral distance effects are important and not to be neglected.

Acknowledgements The research was supported by ASD projects A202 and A214 of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

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Z.P. Wen et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 22 (2002) 11751182 [26] Shibata A. Prediction of the probability of earthquake damage to reinforced concrete building groups in a city. Proceedings of Seventh World Conference on Earthquake Engineering; 1980. p. 395401. [27] Kircher CA, Nassar AA, Kustu O, Holmes WT. Development of building damage functions for earthquake loss estimation. Earthquake Spectra 1997;13(4):663 82. [28] Zhou XY. Some problems about the design response spectrum. Research Report of Chinese Academy of Building Research, 1982 (in Chinese). [29] Shinozuka M, Feng MQ, Kim HK, Kim SH. Nonlinear static procedure for fragility curve development. J Engng Mech ASCE 2000;126:128795. [30] Karim KR, Yamazaki F. Effect of earthquake ground motions on fragility curves of highway bridge piers based on numerical simulation. Earthquake Engng Struct Dyn 2001;30(12):183956. [31] Seed HB, Idriss IM, Kiefer FW. Characteristics of rock motions during earthquakes. J Soil Mech Found Div ASCE 1969;95: 1199218.

[20] Yin ZQ, Li S. Elasto-plastic earthquake responses of multi-story framed structures. Earthquake Engng Engng Vibr 1981;1(2):5677. [21] Yin ZQ, Li S, Sun P. Relation between story displacement and yield strength in multi-story framed structures and problem of controlling displacement to prevent collapse. Earthquake Engng Engng Vibr 1985;5(1):3344. [22] Veletson AS, Newmark NM. Effect of inelastic behavior on the response of simple systems to earthquake motions. Proceedings of the Second World Conference of Earthquake Engineering, vol. 2; 1960. [23] Yin ZQ, Li SZ, Yang S. Methods for calculating P-delta effect on earthquake response and displacement in tall buildings. Earthquake Engng Engng Vibr 1992;12(3):71 6. [24] Yin ZQ. The method of seismic damage and loss prediction. Beijing: Seismological Press; 1995. p. 4972, in Chinese. [25] Yamaguchi N, Yamazaki F. Estimation of strong motion distribution in the 1995 Kobe earthquake based on building damage data. Earthquake Engng Struct Dyn 2001;30:787 801.