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The Internet Application of the Current Version of the Mexico City Building Code to Compute Earthquake Design Spectra and Strong Ground Motion Records for Non-Linear Time History Analysis

Session: Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment: Where Do We Go from Here? II

Type: Oral

Date: 4/20/2021

Presentation Time: 03:15 PM Pacific

Description: 

Several earthquakes have damaged Mexico City in the past, particularly interface thrust events located at distances larger than 200 km and intraslab normal faulting earthquakes at distances between 100 and 200 km. The seismic response of Mexico City soil deposits is well known to produce dramatic site amplifications, whose frequency characteristics are crucial to explain the observed structural damages. The new version of the Mexico City Building code, issued in 2018, contains changes related to recent research findings.

In particular: a) The ability of estimating variations of soil response characteristics within tens of meters in some cases; b) The observation that soil properties in the lakebed zone change with time because of groundwater withdrawal; c) Recognition of the fact that certain structures should be analyzed via non-linear time history analysis in order to correctly asses their seismic performance.

When trying to incorporate in the Building Code the findings listed above, we realized that some of the new specifications became unmanageable in traditional Building Code format. Hence, an internet application was constructed to compute site-specific earthquake design spectra and site-specific strong ground motion records for non-linear time history analysis for any given site in Mexico City.

We named the application SASID (Spanish acronym of Sistema de Acciones Sísmicas de Diseño) and now it is part of the current seismic requirements of the Mexico City Building Code. To our best knowledge SASID is the first internet application that has been developed as a part of a Building Code. This presentation describes the operation and technical basis of SASID.

Presenting Author: Mario G. Ordaz

Student Presenter: No

Authors