AUTHOR=Vicencio Felipe , Alexander Nicholas A. TITLE=Seismic evaluation of Site-City interaction effects between city blocks JOURNAL=Frontiers in Built Environment VOLUME=10 YEAR=2024 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/built-environment/articles/10.3389/fbuil.2024.1403642 DOI=10.3389/fbuil.2024.1403642 ISSN=2297-3362 ABSTRACT=

In urban environments, buildings are often seismically designed with their standalone response, such as isolated structures devoid of surrounding structures. Nonetheless, there is always a chance that a significant seismic interaction between nearby buildings through the underlying soil will occur in big urban areas with high building densities. This paper evaluates the Site-City interaction (SCI) between different city block arrangements under seismic excitation given different parameters of the buildings and centre-to-centre interbuilding distances. A database of strong ground motion records with Far-Field, Near-Field Without Pulse and Near-Field Pulse-Like characteristics are employed. The results suggest that the SCI effects were strongly influenced by the building properties and resonance effects of the soil stratum. Furthermore, as a mean for all the earthquakes considered here, the SCI can amplify or reduce the seismic response of the buildings, depending on the relative position between the city blocks.