Collapse Analysis of Buildings Subjected to Seismic Excitation, Tsunami, and Debris Collision

Abstract


The Great East Japan Earthquake and the following tsunami which occurred on the 11th of March, 2011, caused a big disaster along the ocean-side of Tohoku area. The big tsunami carried different kinds of debris such as ships and cars up the stream, which caused additional damages to the buildings in the area. In this study, a structural collapse analysis of a steel building is performed using a finite element code based upon the ASI-Gauss technique. A seismic excitation recorded in Kesennuma-shi is first applied to the steel building model, followed by an input of the drag force and buoyant force due to tsunami wave. At the last phase of the analysis, a debris model with a velocity is collided and the collapse behavior of the building is analyzed.


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