SEISMIC FRAGILITY ASSESSMENT AND RETROFIT OF A GOVERNMENT HOSPITAL BUILDING IN CHITTAGONG, BANGLADESH

Abstract

Chittagong Medical College Hospital (CMCH) is one of the most important government hospitals in Bangladesh. It is located in the heart of Chittagong city, the only port city of Bangladesh. Bangladesh National Building Code (BNBC) is the only official document, which has been used since 1993 as guidelines for seismic design of buildings. As per the guidelines of BNBC, the CMCH building was designed for an earthquake ground motion having a return period of 200 years. However, the revised version of BNBC has suggested that the building structures shall be designed for an earthquake ground motion having a return period of 2475 years. It is mentioned that a single seismic performance objective, the life safety, of the building is considered in both versions of BNBC. Considering the significant importance of CMCH building in providing the emergency facilities during and after the earthquake, it is indispensable to evaluate its seismic vulnerability for the two types of earthquake ground motion records having return period of 200 (Type-I) and 2475 (Type-II) years. In this regard, this paper deals with the seismic vulnerability assessment of the existing ancillary building (AB) of CMCH. The seismic vulnerability of building is usually expressed in the form of fragility curves, which display the conditional probability that the structural demand (structural response) caused by various levels of ground shaking exceeds the structural capacity defined by a damage state. The analytical method based on elastic response spectrum analyses results is used in evaluating the seismic fragility curves of the building. To the end, 3-D finite element model of the building subjected to 18 ground motion records having PGA of 0.325g to 0.785g has been used in theresponse spectrum analysis in order to evaluate its inter-story-drift ratio (IDR), an engineeringdemand parameter (EDP) for developing fragility curves. The analytical results have shown thatstructural deficiencies exist in the existing ancillary building (AB) for the Type-II earthquakeground motion record, which requires the building to be retrofitted to ensure that the existingancillary building (AB) becomes functional during and after the Type-II earthquake groundmotion record.