Influence of Soil-Structure Interaction (SSI) on the performance of the Connected Control Method (CCM)

Resumo

The Connected Control Method (CCM) has proved to be an effective strategy to mitigate the building
vibrational response and prevent inter-building pounding effects. In this technique, adjacent buildings are linked
together by means of coupling devices to provide appropriate reaction control forces. The application of the
CCM using different kinds of passive, active, and semiactive linking devices has been investigated with positive
results. It should be noted that most of such research considered the adjacent buildings supported on a fixed base.
Nonetheless, every structure generally interacts with the surrounding soil. This process is known as soil-structure
interaction (SSI) and there are still few studies in literature about its influence on the CCM and the mathematical
formulation regarding the problem is merely incipient. Thus, this work aims to evaluate SSI influence on the
performance of this control technique, besides presenting a simple analysis methodology to this type of problem.
For this purpose, two buildings connected models supported on a fixed and flexible base are compared. The
buildings are modeled as shear buildings and the soil is simulated by a discrete model representing a viscoelastic
homogeneous half-space. The results are compared in a way to evaluate SSI influence on coupled buildings
dynamic behavior. The numerical analysis was performed in GNU Octave software.