Probabilistic investigation of the pounding effect in steel moment resisting frames with equal and unequal heights

In this research, the influence of the pounding phenomenon of two adjacent steel moment resisting frames (SMRFs) with 2 and 5-story with an intermediate ductility is investigated by considering equal and unequal heights under seismic excitations. In this way, two scenarios are applied. The first and second scenarios are related to the pounding of two SMRFs with an equal height (both frames with 2-story) and an unequal height (2-story and 5-story frames), respectively. In the following, at first, sensitivity analysis is conducted by the Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) method. Then, the collapse performance of the studied SMRFs is evaluated by incremental dynamic analysis (IDA), and fragility curves under 14 far-fault records and also, the failure probability is predicted by the Kriging meta-model. The results of sensitivity analysis indicate that the yield strength of cross-sections and dead load were the greatest effect on failure probability computation. Also, in the statistical level of 50%, the collapse probability of SMRFs with an equal height is 17% compared to the SMRFs with an unequal height. Also, the results of the Kriging meta-model show that the failure probability is increased by 65% in an unequal height versus an equal height.