Field Test of RC School Building Retrofitted by Post-Tensioned Rods

Abstract eng:
The 1985 Mexico City Earthquake and the 1999 Chi-Chi Earthquake revealed the seismically insufficient performance of the RC school buildings both in Mexico and Taiwan. Seismic retrofit of these numerous vulnerable buildings is an important societal issue to be resolved. Field pushover tests provide a direct approach to assess the seismic behavior of real building structures and a precious chance to verify the seismic retrofitting methods. Renewal of school buildings provides an opportunity to make use of the buildings to be demolished as the specimens for the field tests. In August 2007, one existing 2-story school building of Guanmiao Elementary School in Taiwan had been successfully field tested. This paper reports the test results of two specimens: the school building in its as-built form and the school building retrofitted by post-tensioned rods. The as-built specimen consisted of two 4-bay/2-story RC frames partially infilled with brick walls. The seismic retrofit design required installing sixteen post-tensioned rods and stressing each rod to half of its yield strength. Retrofitting school buildings using post-tensioned tendons is a technology widely used in Mexico. It has been proved to be an economic and constructible retrofitting method. Experimental observations in field tests indicated that the seismic performance of school frames can be effectively retrofitted using post-tensioned rods. Main results of these tests are reported, analyzed and discussed in this paper.

• Export as: BibTeX | MARC | MARCXML | DC | EndNote | NLM | RefWorks
• Add to your basket