Vulnerability Assessment of Historic Structures in Kathmandu, Nepal

Abstract eng:
Nepal is located on a part of the Himalayan orogeny that has induced many destructive earthquakes there and in surrounding areas. Kathmandu is the capital and a center of culture in Nepal. Unfortunately, many historic buildings have been damaged by earthquakes over the centuries because of its location in an earthquake-prone area. In particular, an earthquake impacting Kathmandu in 1934 had a magnitude greater than 8, destroying most of the cultural heritage sites, such as temples, shrines and monuments. Recently, Nepal suffered catastrophic damage caused by a destructive earthquake on April 25, 2015. The first priority in such events is to save as many human lives as possible and protect people from secondary disaster. However, historic structures in world heritage sites can never be replaced, because of their authentic character. To solve this major problem, detailed investigation of such historic structures is indispensable. The ultimate goal is to formulate comprehensive risk mitigation planning strategies for historic areas in Kathmandu. We selected for study a historical masonry building in the Jhatapol area, near Patani Durbar Square. This building was constructed in the 18th century and is currently used as an assembly house. With the aim of developing strengthening techniques for heritage buildings and as a first step toward seismic disaster risk mitigation, the structure of the building was analyzed using the refined distinct element method (RDEM). In this study, the strength of materials of the building was investigated through experiments. Following that investigation and determination of other structural parameters, a numerical model of the building was verified by observation of dominant frequencies. Seismic vulnerability of historic buildings was examined. After verifying that the natural frequencies from the analytical model coincided with those from microtremor observations, seismic behaviors of the targeted masonry building were analyzed using RDEM. When ground motions with occurrence probabilities of 10% and 5% over 50 years were input, there was more severe damage, especially when those motions were in a direction transverse to the building.

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