Collapse Fragility Evaluation of Ductile Reinforced Concrete Block Wall Systems for Seismic Risk Assessment

Abstract

AbstractSeismic risk assessment is a critical first step toward mitigating the social and economic losses resulting from earthquakes. The FEMA P-58 document, prepared by the Applied Technology Council (ATC), provides a methodology for seismic performance assessment of buildings. The methodology consists of five main steps: assembling the building performance model, defining earthquake hazards, analyzing building response, developing collapse fragility, and quantifying performance. Owing to the probabilistic nature of the methodology framework, each step incorporates uncertainty. After the 2011 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, a significant number of reinforced masonry low-rise buildings were deemed unusable, although the damage was repairable. This created a need to investigate the seismic collapse performance of a reinforced masonry shear wall (RMSW) system. In this study, the FEMA P-58 methodology is implemented to assess the performance of a typical RMSW office building designed according to th...