Potential damage assessment in buildings undergoing tilt

Abstract

Estimation of the degree of building damage is a complex problem, because the potential sources of damage are various. The main components of building movement for damage assessment are tilt, angular distortion, horizontal strain and deflection ratio. Some of these parameters are interrelated. In this study, damage criteria are developed that correlate the building damage with the most critical components of movement, namely deflection ratio, horizontal strain and tilt. The building wall is idealised as a simply supported elastic deep beam loaded by both vertical and horizontal forces. Equations of maximum tensile strain within the beam are developed under the concept of limiting tensile strains in order to study the onset of cracking in buildings with various wall dimensions and material properties. A number of case studies of tilted buildings are used to verify the approach.