Evaluation of Earthquake Performance of Reinforced Concrete Buildings with Fuzzy Logic Method

Abstract

Reinforced concrete building is a type of building whose structural system consists of reinforced concrete columns, beams, wall wall, slabs and foundations. Due to the strong earthquakes in our country, it has been observed that reinforced concrete buildings have been severely damaged or collapsed from past to present. The evaluation of buildings after earthquakes and their performances are quite important for the safety of life and property. In the literature, different methods have been developed for post-earthquake evaluation of buildings, either low-cost and fast or slow and high-cost and tool-demanding. In this study, in order to overcome the gap in the literature, the evaluation of earthquake performance of buildings with fuzzy logic method is discussed. In this context, the performance of the building was evaluated by taking into account the concrete compressive strength, number of floors, ground floor area, area of column and shear walls, ground floor area and architectural parameters. The data of 18, 28 and 146 buildings affected by the earthquakes in Afyon, Bingöl and Van provinces in 2002, 2003 and 2011, respectively, were used in the study. Out of the total 192 building data, 94 buildings were processed as data and fuzzy logic rules were applied. The remaining 98 buildings were tested with this method. The buildings considered are light, moderate and severely damaged or collapsed. Matlab program was used in the study. The method and result used in the study are in the class of fast and second stage methods in the literature, which are reliable but do not reflect the final result. With the method revealed in the study, the damage status of reinforced concrete buildings can be determined quickly and reliably. In this context, the buildings were evaluated as no damage/slight, moderate and severely damaged or collapsed. According to the results, the correct estimation rate of the damage status of 98 buildings was found to be 88%. It is seen that the fuzzy logic method can predict building performances at a quite high rate. Compared to the existing second stage assessment methods in the literature, this result is more conservative.