Postearthquake Investigation of a Base-Isolated Building in the 2022 Ms 6.8 Luding Earthquake

Abstract

This paper presents the investigation results of a base-isolated RC frame-shear wall structure located in Luding County, Sichuan Province, China, which was damaged by a Ms 6.8 earthquake on September 5, 2022. This recently constructed school office building was about 9 km away from the epicenter. The isolation layer of this building consists of 54 rubber bearings and 12 viscous dampers. These viscous dampers or their connections failed during the earthquake, and the limit state included connection breaking or global buckling of the damper. Also, the superstructure suffered some minor damage. To investigate the cause of structural damages, a nonlinear time-history analysis is conducted using the ground motions recorded by four seismic stations close to the building. The onsite investigation and numerical simulation results revealed the possible reasons for the failure.