Antiplane Earthquake Waves in Long Structures

In this paper, the physical phenomena associated with wave passage under long buildings have been studied. A two‐dimensional, continuous model has been used to represent the building vibration. Analytical, closed‐form solutions have been obtained for the response to incident monochromatic, plane SH‐waves. The soil‐structure interaction has been neglected. The response of this model abounds with physical phenomena that cannot be seen from the response of one‐dimensional building models. Some of these phenomena are important and must be considered in the design practice. For example, the propagating waves excite antisymmetric horizontal modes of vibration even in perfectly symmetrical long buildings. Thus, they contribute with forces and deformations that are not present in the one‐dimensional analysis. It is shown in this paper that buildings can vibrate with modes that are exponential functions in the vertical direction, and that the transfer of the wave energy from the ground into the building depends on...