SOIL TYPE DEPENDENCY ON THE SEISMIC PERFORMANCE OF RC PRECAST GOVERNMENT RESIDENTIAL BUILDING

Malaysia is known to have less seismic activities as it is located in the intraplate region and is far from major plate boundary faults. Besides, Malaysia also experiences frequent tremors and has recorded a devastating tsunami due to the active seismic activities in neighboring countries. The latest occurrence of earthquake in Ranau on June, 5 2015 that had caused casualties and damages to properties, triggered Malaysia to take immediate actions to deal with all the issues. Following that, the national seismic code and National Annex were introduced in 2015 and 2017 respectively. However, buildings constructed before both documents were established do not consider seismic requirements. This study is conducted to evaluate the seismic performance of the target building and improves it with suitable seismic retrofit methods. A 5-story RC precast government residential building is selected to be evaluated based on the seismic hazard level at Bentong, Pahang with  g and Lahad Datu, Sabah with  g considering soil profile models available in Malaysia. Capacity spectrum method is carried out to estimate the performance points based on specific seismic hazard levels with different soil profile models. The seismic performance of the building is then evaluated based on the performance level of plastic hinges formation observed at the performance points. Finding indicates that the target building can survive based on the seismic hazard level at Bentong, Pahang with soil profile model 1 without requiring any seismic retrofitting. Nonetheless, it cannot survive concerning the soil type E of soil profile model 2. For the seismic hazard level at Lahad Datu, Sabah, the target building cannot survive concerning the soil types C, D and E of soil profile model 1 and 2. Seismic retrofit plan is applied to the target building, and the seismic performance of the retrofitted building is re-evaluated. The finding shows that the retrofitted building can survive based on both seismic hazard levels with soil profile models 1 and 2.

Keywords: seismic performance, plastic hinge, pushover, capacity spectrum method, seismic retrofit.