Abstract:
Ground excitation on two buildings can cause pounding if the gap between them is not
enough for their free vibration response. Pounding can cause amplification of internal
forces of the response structure elements and impact force at the contact zone that usually
have not calculated yet in the preliminary design. Therefore, it can cause damage and
failure of the building. The two buildings are modeled as MDOF discrete. To release the
bounding between the degree of freedom, the dynamic analysis is carried out by modal
superposition method, then the analysis is continued by numerical analysis by Runge Kutta
method. The parameters of study are mass of the model, stiffness of the model, pounding
stiffness, and the initial gap between the buildings. The result of study, shows that the
pounding force will increase as the initial gap between the buildings is decrease. Minimum
gap between the buildings to avoid pounding is less than the relative maximum of total
absolute value range of the both buildings under designed earthquake force. Therefore, by
knowing minimum gap between buildings so the pounding can be avoided
