| Hong Kong is a region of moderate seismic risk. However, buildings in Hong Kong are traditionally designed without seismic resistance provisions. Since transfer plate systems are often used in reinforced concrete high-rise buildings, a potential risk of "soft-storey" failure mechanism may be formed if that building is under seismic attack. In this study, simple analytical models and analysis procedures for engineering application purposes are developed to assess the seismic performance of a high-rise building with a transfer plate, designed to non-seismic resistance requirements. Two experimental results, namely shaking table tests and pseudo-dynamic tests, were used to verify the numerical simulations and to assess the seismic resistance of a transfer plate. From these numerical and experimental results, some findings were obtained and used in the development of two new analytical approaches. They are as follows:;When compared the numerical results and experimental data obtained through this study, it indicated that numerical analyses were carried out on high-rise building structures using the conventional elastic program with a rigid floor diaphragm assumption were underestimated. In order to correctly evaluate the responses of high-rise buildings, a new approach, namely advanced simplified un-coupled approach, based on alternative modelling method was developed and used in this study.;Using the above new approach, this study also contends that it is possible to predict the inelastic behaviour of buildings structures through a simple non-linear elastic time-history analyses. Based on the comparison of the experimental data and numerical results, displacement factors should be applied to the numerical results for estimating the actual storey drifts under a severe earthquake attack.;The experimental and numerical results have indicated that main structural failures may occur immediately above the transfer plate. This important finding indicates that current methods, such as SEAOC, UBC and the Chinese seismic design code, used in the classification of a "soft-storey" are not appropriate for this type of high-rise building. Therefore, this study has provided new means to accurately predict the seismic responses of reinforced concrete high-rise building structures. The presence of a soft-storey can be more accurately assessed, using the two new ratios, namely ratios of deflection (R u) and inter-storey drift (RDeltau), developed in this study. |
