Risk-Oriented Seismic Upgrade Planning Considering Advanced Protection Technologies - a Case Study

Abstract eng:
This paper describes a case study for the preliminary seismic upgrade design of a seismically-deficient building using a risk- oriented optimization platform that considers both conventional and supplemental damping systems. The platform combines the P-Spectra and the FEMA P58 methodology for the assessment of building response and post-earthquake impact in order to quantify performance benefits in metrics that are directly relevant to infrastructure owners, and to identify optimal strategies that may otherwise be missed in a traditional code-based retrofit process. The risk-oriented optimization platform relies on P-Spectra, which are rapid performance-optimization tools that display the normalized responses of different solutions combining conventional retrofits (e.g.: strengthening and stiffening) and different commercially available supplemental damping systems. A procedure that converts the P-Spectra responses into FEMA P58-based loss and downtime estimate is then used to create performance maps for different design options. This approach enables engineers to actively and conveniently explore the performance of conventional and supplemental damping solutions at the onset of the design cycle, and make informed decisions that achieve owner’s objectives using damping technologies. The case study considers a seismically-deficient concrete building retrofitted using a conventional code-based approach, as well as more advanced viscous and viscoelastic damping solutions identified by the proposed risk-oriented optimization platform. The different retrofit schemes are modelled, and their performance in terms of post-earthquake loss and downtime are evaluated and compared. The study demonstrates that by choosing optimal solutions suggested by the proposed methodology, an increase in the benefit due to reduction in direct losses and downtime compared to a traditional code-based retrofit can be achieved. These results indicate that traditional code-based retrofits using conventional strengthening and stiffening are not necessarily most economical since losses associated with damage and downtime can be high if high-performance retrofit schemes involving advanced technologies are not thoroughly considered at the planning stage.

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