Discussion of 'Experimental Seismic Collapse Study of a Full-Scale, 4-Story, Soft-Story, Wood-Frame Building' by Pouria Bahmani, John W. van de Lindt, Gary L. Mochizuki, Mikhail Gershfeld, and Steven E. Pryor

摘要

The purpose of this discussion is to point out a striking contradiction posed by the collapse experiments that the authors seemed to miss. That is, conventional wisdom holds that soft-story buildings have an unacceptable risk of collapse during earthquakes, yet the authors' collapse test results indicate just the opposite. The authors noted that the building specimen they tested can be viewed as a worst-case scenario for a soft-story building (representing a San Francisco apartment building located on a street corner). The tests included motions that had a maximum considered earthquake (MCE) shaking intensity as defined in the standard referenced by building codes [i.e., ASCE 7-10 (ASCE 2010)]. The intent of ASCE 7-10 was to provide a building design that has only a small probability of collapse during a MCE (an approximately 10% chance according to section C11.4 of ASCE 7-10).