RESEARCH ARTICLE
Vulnerability Assessment of Reinforced Concrete Framed Structures Considering the Effect of Structural Characteristics
Ioana Olteanu*, 1, Alex H. Barbat2, Mihai Budescu1
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2015Volume: 9
First Page: 321
Last Page: 329
Publisher ID: TOCIEJ-9-321
DOI: 10.2174/1874149501509010321
Article History:
Received Date: 14/10/2014Revision Received Date: 12/11/2014
Acceptance Date: 1/12/2014
Electronic publication date: 28/5/2015
Collection year: 2015
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Considering the effects of earthquakes occurred during the last 15 years, this article focusses on finding solutions to minimize the human and economic losses. Several methodologies were developed in order to assess the vulnerability of the built environment with special reference to one of the most suitable structural systems in seismic areas for dwellings, offices or other functionalities, which is the reinforced concrete framed structure. Thus, the present article studies the influence on the vulnerability of reinforced concrete framed structures of geometric structural characteristics like the slab thickness, the building height and the plan configuration. Referring to the slab, it adds supplementary stiffness to the structure that can significantly influence upon its overall failure mechanism. 3D static nonlinear analyses are conducted by means of the SAP2000 computer program. The results are capacity curves which are used to develop the vulnerability curves. Three thicknesses are considered for the slab: 0.1 cm, 0.12 cm and 0.15 m. Medium and high rise structures are considered, with 4, and 8 levels, respectively, in order to determine the influence of the building height on the vulnerability index. Three plan configurations of the buildings are compared: a square one, a rectangular one and an L shaped one. For all the analyzed cases, the corresponding vulnerability curves are compared. The obtained results reveal that more realistic results for the behavior of the structure can be obtained if special attention is given to the structural characteristics, especially during the conceptual design process.
