Development of Seismic Vulnerability Curves for Masonry Buildings Using the Applied Element Method

Abstract

As an approach to the problem of the seismic vulnerability evaluation of existing buildings using the predicted vulnerability method, analytical procedures are applied to produce vulnerability curves for different building classes. For some building types, mainly masonry structures, the development of those curves will be complicated and time consuming if a Finite Element-based method is used. Therefore, the Applied Element Method is used here to develop fragility curves for those challenging building classes. The incremental dynamic analysis of a 6-storey industrial masonry building built in 1906 in Montreal, Canada has been carried out using 14 sets of synthetic and real ground motions representing three M, R categories. Intensity and damage measures are pointed on the IDA curves at three structural performance levels, immediate occupancy, life safety, and collapse prevention, for each ground motion. The statistical analysis of those points is then carried out to develop fragility curves for the masonry building at each performance level. To show the effect of the building typology, those fragility curves are compared with the fragility curve provided by NIBS in HAZUS-MH MR1 Technical and User's Manual for masonry buildings.