Damage evaluation of reinforced concrete and steel frames under critical successive scenarios

Abstract

This paper compares the vulnerability of initial shock-damage reinforced concrete (RC) with steel frames in successive scenarios, as an essential part of developing a framework to consider seismic sequence hazard into structural design. For this, two sets of regular RC and steel moment resisting frames with 3, 5, 7, 10, 12 and 15 stories, are designed and analyzed under two different databases with/without seismic sequences in OpenSees software.The damage states of the model frames were then measured by the Park and Ang’s damage index. From the results of this investigation, it is observed that only considering the mainshock will underestimate the seismic risk in both sets of RC and steel frames. The results of damage evaluation also reveal that RC frames have better performance than steel frames in seismic sequence phenomena. Furthermore, steel frames damage is about 53% more than the damage caused by RC frames under critical successive earthquakes.