Abstract
The proposed study develops fragility functions for non-seismically designed reinforced concrete structures considering different pounding configurations. The study addresses an existing research gap, since large-scale seismic risk assessment studies involving the seismic performance assessment of building portfolios usually do not involve fragility functions accounting for the possibility of pounding. The selected structures include configurations involving different separation distance values and exhibiting floor-to-floor pounding, floor-to-column pounding, pounding between structures with a significant height difference, and pounding between structures with a significant mass difference. The behaviour of these pounding configurations was analysed using incremental dynamic analysis and compared with that of the corresponding control cases (i.e., individual structures with no interaction with other structures). The results indicate the type of failure mechanism that contributes to the global collapse of the different configurations and the influence of the separation distance. Results highlight the main differences between the expected performance of different pounding configurations with respect to the occurrence of the failure mechanism that governs their collapse. Finally, results indicate that large-scale seismic risk assessment studies should consider fragility functions accounting for different pounding configurations when the possibility of pounding is not negligible, except in cases involving floor-to-floor pounding.
Highlights
Existing research addressing the seismic performance assessment of building portfolios for the purpose of regional-scale seismic risk assessment studies is often based on several simplified assumptions [1,2]
The selected structures include configurations that involve different separation distance values and that exhibit floor-to-floor pounding, floorto-column pounding, pounding between structures with a significant height difference, and pounding between buildings with a significant mass difference. The behaviour of these pounding configurations was analysed for fifty ground motion records using incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) and compared with that of the corresponding control cases
The results provided detailed insights about the type of failure mechanism that contributes to the global collapse of the different configurations and about the influence of the separation distance value
Summary
Existing research addressing the seismic performance assessment of building portfolios for the purpose of regional-scale seismic risk assessment studies is often based on several simplified assumptions [1,2]. Since the latter scenario is the one underlying conventional seismic design procedures, the failure modes found in buildings undergoing pounding are expected to be different [9,12,13,14,15] This issue has been identified in several post-earthquake surveys [8,13,15] where buildings exhibiting pounding effects were seen to have a higher risk of collapse or developed severe damage levels. Among the research studies developed so far, a number of them involved realistic building configurations and were conducted to address the pounding effect on the global structural response during seismic actions (e.g., see [19,32] among others) Overall, several of these studies have found that pounding influences the response of adjacent buildings in terms of displacements [32,37], as well as in terms of acceleration, namely during the impacts [33,38]. The results of the study provide insights about the possibility of using fragility functions that do not consider the effect of pounding for building typologies that may experience pounding
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