Revisions to Soil-Structure Interaction Procedures in NEHRP Design Provisions

The NEHRP Recommended Provisions for Seismic Regulations for New Buildings and Other Structures have contained procedures for soil-structure interaction analysis that were originally developed between 1975 and 1977 by the Applied Technology Council Committee on Soil-Structure Interaction (ATC3 Committee 2C). These procedures affect the analysis of seismic demand in structures by modifying the base shear for a fixed-base structure to that for a flexible-base structure with a longer fundamental mode period and a different (usually larger) system damping ratio. In the 2000 NEHRP Provisions and Commentary, several changes were made to these procedures that affect the analysis of foundation stiffness, and in turn affect the SSI adjustment to base shear. In this paper, SSI analysis procedures in the pre-2000 and 2000 NEHRP Provisions are examined relative to a database of “observed” SSI effects previously evaluated using system identification analyses. Through this calibration exercise and focused numerical analyses, we discuss the motivation and justification for the modifications to the NEHRP SSI analysis procedures.