Reliability assessment of RC frames rehabilitated by eccentrically braces having vertical shear link

Abstract

A considerable number of existing reinforced concrete (RC) structures need to seismic rehabilitation due to several reasons such as being designed just based on gravity loading and/or having an unsatisfactory level of ductility. One of the types of steel bracing can be referred to eccentrically braced frames with a vertical link. This system has some advantages such as an increase in ductility, stiffness and lateral strength, the ability to adapt to the architecture, and also the minimum weight added to the structure. In this study, reliability analysis assessment of two existing 3-, and 9-story RC frames in two cases including original and rehabilitated with an eccentrically braced frame having a vertical link is presented. Two limit states are defined as: maximum roof displacement and maximum inter-story displacement. The seismic behavior of frames was assessed by nonlinear static pushover analysis with finite element program OpenSees in two performance levels, including collapse prevention and life safety. Five random variables represented the variability in resistance of concrete material, bars and steel profiles yield stress, beams height, columns dimension, and also bars cross-section. Sensitivity analysis was carried out to recognize the effect of random variables on the reliability index. The reliability analysis was performed by two different methods: Hasofer–Lind and Monte Carlo with 25, 100, 1000, 10,000 and 100,000 simulated samples by considering two distributions including Normal and Log-Normal. Finally, a comparison between two common reliability methods was carried out in order to select the most appropriate method for performing the best seismic performance reliability analysis of RC frames rehabilitated by the proposed system.