PLAXIS 3D Tutorial 09: Free vibration and earthquake analysis of a building

This example demonstrates the natural frequency of a long five-storey building when subjected to free vibration and earthquake loading.

The building consists of 5 floors and a basement. It is 10 m wide and 17 m high including the basement. The total height from the ground level is 5 x 3 m = 15 m and the basement is 2 m deep. A value of 5 kN/m² is taken as the weight of the floors and the walls. The building is constructed on a clay layer of 15 m depth underlayed by a deep sand layer. In the model, 25 m of the sand layer will be considered.

This requires the Dynamics module.

The attached *.p3dlog file contains all the commands to generate the models up to calculation (without point for curves selection). With a Bentley Geotechnical SELECT Entitlement [GSE] (former PLAXIS-VIP) licence you can use the commands runner to open the *.p3dlog file and to execute all commands in one go. Without a VIP licence, you can open the *.p3dlog file with any text editor, like Notepad, and then execute the commands via the command line command by command.