An Extensive Validation Exercise on Simplified Methods for the Seismic Performance Evaluation of RC Frame Building

Abstract eng:
Vulnerability is a probabilistic measure of how prone a structure is to damage under a certain shaking severity. A large number of buildings need to be analysed to have the statistic of the seismic performance. Therefore, analytical methods for the vulnerability evaluation make use of simplified methodologies of analysis, which can afford the treatment of a large building population with a reasonable computational effort. On these bases a Simplified Pushover-Based Earthquake Loss Assessment method (SP-BELA) has been developed. SP-BELA adopts a simplified methodology to identify the structural capacity of the building through the definition of a pushover curve. Displacement capacity limits are identified on the pushover curve, and these limits are compared with the displacement demand for each building in the random population, thus leading to the generation of vulnerability curves. The displacement demand can be defined through a displacement spectral ordinate, which represents the peak of response of a Single Degree of Freedom (SDOF) system equivalent to the original structure in terms of amount of dissipated energy and period of vibration. Alternatively, a nonlinear time history analysis can be performed using an equivalent SDOF system with a behaviour that can be identified through the pushover curve. The aim of the research work presented in this paper is to validate the simplified methodology implemented in SP-BELA against the results of sophisticated FE nonlinear dynamic analyses. The comparison between simplified and FE analyses is carried out for RC buildings representative of the “as built” in Italy.

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