Development of design response spectra for Northern Peninsular Malaysia based on UBC 97 code

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to develop design spectrum based on UBC 97 for Northern Peninsular Malaysia, which covers Penang Island, Alor Star and Ipoh. Existing reinforced concrete (RC) structures in Malaysia have been designed according to BS 8110 without any provision for seismic loading. Although situated on the stable shelf, several places especially in Northern Peninsular Malaysia, which is Penang Islands, Alor Star and Ipoh have experienced ground shaking effect due to the long distant earthquake occurred in Acheh and Nias recently. Northern Penang are situated close to the earthquake tremors may demand a quick review on the existing design code for designing structures. This paper presents the design spectrum for Northern Peninsular Malaysia based on total 193 boreholes from site investigation reports derived using Seismic Design provision of 1997 Uniform Building Code. The results indicated that most soil in Northern Peninsular Malaysia can be categorised as class D, SD (stiff soil). Most of the soils categorised in SD, but the highest Response Spectrum Acceleration (RSA) are in other categorised, which is Penang Island for SC (0.76 g), Ipoh and Alor Star is SE are 0.31 g and 0.47 g respectively.