Ground motion intensity measure to evaluate seismic performance of rocking foundation system

The rocking foundation is effective for reducing structural seismic demand and avoiding overdesign of the foundation. It is crucial to evaluate the performance of rocking foundations because they cause plastic hinging in the soil. In this study, to derive optimized ground motion intensity measures (IMs) for rocking foundations, the efficiency of IMs correlated with engineering demand parameters (EDPs) was estimated through the coefficient determination using a physical modeling database for rocking shallow foundations. Foundation deformations, the structural horizontal drift ratio, and contribution in drift from foundation rotation and sliding were selected as crucial EDPs for the evaluation of rocking foundation systems. Among 15 different IMs, the peak ground velocity exhibited the most efficient parameters correlated with the EDPs, and it was discovered to be an efficient ground motion IM for predicting the seismic performance of rocking foundations. For vector regression, which uses two IMs to present the EDPs, the IMs indicating time features improved the efficiency of the regression curves, but the correlation was poor when these are used independently. Moreover, the ratio of the column-hinging base shear coefficient to the rocking base shear coefficient showed obvious trends for the accurate assessment of the seismic performance of rocking foundation-structure systems.