Human comfort assessment of buildings considering the modelling of masonry infills and the soil-structure effect

Resumo

In the last decades, the urban verticalization in Brazil has been remarkable, and even in medium-sized
cities, the project and construction of high buildings is growing exponentially. However, the architectural dareness
and also the increasing in the building project’s slenderness have been crucial to reducing the natural frequency
values of these structures, and in some situations, these facts could induce excessive vibration problems. On the
other hand, important aspects, generally disregarded in the current design practice are related to the effects of the
masonry infills and the soil-structure interaction. This way, this research work aims to develop an analysis
methodology aiming to evaluate the structural behaviour and assess the human comfort of buildings subjected to

the wind nondeterministic dynamic actions, including in the analysis the effects of the masonry infills and the soil-
structure interaction. This way, the dynamic structural behaviour of a 16-storey reinforced concrete building, 48

m high and dimensions of 15.0 m by 14.2 m is investigated. Thus, numerical models were developed to obtain a
more realistic representation of the system, based on the Finite Element Method (FEM), through the use of the
ANSYS program. The results obtained along this investigation have indicated relevant quantitative differences
when the dynamic structural response of the building was analysed, such as the reduction of the horizontal

translational displacements and peak acceleration values, when the effects of the masonry infills and the soil-
structure interaction were considered.