Reflection on the Earthquake Design Practice in Hong Kong through a Time History Analysis

Hong Kong as an international financial center has a skyline defined by high rise buildings. Many of the high rise buildings are built on reclamation soils, due to the limited availability of space and high density of the population. Considering the importance of building safety in this metropolitan area, the authors had presumptuously thought that the seismic hazard would become naturally a serious concern, especially when dealing with reclamation soils together with high rise buildings; however, contrary to our intuition, according to GEO 16 [Pun, 1991], "in Hong Kong, all new buildings are routinely designed against wind load but not seismic load". This phenomenon has aroused the authors' curiosity, and an exploration is made to reveal more about the earthquake design practice for buildings in Hong Kong. A computer simulation tool (FLAC, Itasca Group) is used to give a realistic illustration of the behavior of an ideal building under earthquake loading. A realistic earthquake motion specifically suitable for the Hong Kong - Guang Dong region is adopted as the input motion. Soil structure interaction, and local soil conditions are considered together to determine the dynamic responses of the building.