Strengthening of Low-Rise Concrete Buildings: Applications After Dinar (1995) and Adana-Ceyhan (1998) Earthquakes

Abstract

In the rural areas in Turkey masonry buildings are generally constructed without receiving any engineering service, i.e., they are considered to be non-engineered structures. However, although it is much easier to construct one or two stories houses as masonry buildings, they are very often are built as reinforced concrete structures. Reinforced concrete buildings are most common building type in Turkey, since additional stories can be added on them easily without consulting any civil engineer or receiving professional engineering service although it is not a legal way to do it. These buildings have reinforced concrete slabs supported by beams (or tie beams) on the walls and columns (or vertical ties) in some corners of the walls. Generally, neither beams nor columns have adequate cross sectional dimensions and reinforcement detailing. This is also the case for beam-column joints. These columns and beams produce weak concrete frames and the situation is aggravated unreinforced infill walls which behave as a diagonal struts. During the Dinar (1995) and the Adana-Ceyhan (1998) earthquakes, numerous low-rise buildings were damaged to various degrees. In this paper, the post-earthquake strength evaluation, repair, strengthening and upgrading techniques for these low-rise buildings carried out by the team of the Research and Application Center for Structures and Earthquake of the Istanbul Technical University, are presented. It is emphasized that the strengthening of these non-engineered concrete buildings can be done cost effectively by applying the methods used for the masonry buildings.