Abstract Database

SEISMIC ASSESSMENT OF REINFORCED CONCRETE BUILDINGS AND COMPARISON OF THE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES BY THE APPLICATION OF CONVENTIONAL RETROFITTING METHODS

MEE15613
Manuel Arturo SALAZAR NAVIDAD
Supervisor: Shunsuke SUGANO
Country: EI Salvador
Abstract

The high seismic activity and the great number of human and economic losses that El Salvador has suffered from past earthquakes, have encouraged many researchers to improve the safety of the new constructions. However, it seems that no one has paid the proper attention to old buildings that currently have very low seismic capabilities to withstand earthquake loads. As an example, the 1986 earthquake left over 75 RC buildings severely damaged or collapsed, mainly because, many of them were damaged by the 1965 and 1982 seismic events but they were not properly repaired, leaving over 1500 casualties and considerable economic losses to the country. Even though this background, the Salvadoran’s building code still lacks in a guideline for seismic assessment of existing buildings. Therefore, this document is aimed to disclose a guideline for seismic evaluation and retrofit of RC buildings based on the Japanese method, which establishes a less complicated procedure than other foreign guidelines that are commonly apply in El Salvador such as ATC-40, which requires a non-linear static pushover analysis.  

A 4-story RC building constructed in the early 90’s in El Salvador has been assessed and retrofitted in this document using the first and second level screening methods established in JBDPA, with the aim to propose a new option for rehabilitation of existing structures in El Salvador. Although is not required, a pushover analysis performed by the software STERA 3D has been included in the present report, the very similar results of the comparison between JBPDA and STERA 3D demonstrate the effectiveness of the Japanese method.     

 

Keywords: Seismic evaluation, retrofitting methods, pushover analysis.