Abstract
The resistant shear force of 13 buildings severely damaged by the 1985 Mexico City earthquake was determined by static and dynamic analyses. The results of the static analysis suggest the advisability of increasing the shear base coefficient of the 1987 Mexico City building code RDF87 from 0.4 to 0.6 in the high seismicity zones of the area. The results of the dynamic analysis show that in order to obtain the same safety level, the maximum ordinate of the design spectrum should be larger than the base shear coefficient used with the static method, leading to a 0.8 maximum ordinate for Mexico City. When the resistant shear force is plotted as a function of the natural period of each building, the response spectrum obtained is very similar to the inelastic spectrum derived from the accelerograms, considering 5% critical damping, a ductility factor of 4 and degradation in resistance from 5% to 10%. Based on these results, new design spectra are proposed for use in the high seismicity zones in Mexico City.
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