Seismic response of RC framed buildings designed according to Eurocodes

J. C. VIELMA; A. BARBAT; S. OLLER

Computational methods in earthquake engineering.

Springer Verlag. Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York

Año: 2011; p. 201 - 220

One of the main objectives in design of earthquake resistant structures is to ensure that these do not collapse when subjected to the action of strong motions. Modern codes include a set of prescriptions in order to guarantee that the behavior of the elements and the whole structure is ductile. It is especially important for the designer to know the extent of damage that the structure will suffer under a specific seismic action, typified by the design spectrum. To achieve this damage there are several static and dynamic nonlinear procedures. This paper presents a procedure for nonlinear static analysis, in which the maximum displacements are obtained to satisfy a minimum value of a finite element based damage index. This procedure is validated by applying incremental dynamic analysis, and applied in the assessment of the response of a set of regular reinforced concrete buildings, designed according to EC-2/EC-8 prescriptions, for a high seismic hazard level The results of nonlinear analysis allows the formulation of a new seismic damage index, and damage thresholds associated with five Limit States, which are used to calculate fragility curves and damage probability matrices for the performance point of the studied buildings. The results show that the response of earthquake resistant buildings to follow the prescriptions of EC-2/EC-8 not only ensures that the collapse is not reached, but also the damage made does not exceed the Irreparable Damage Limit State.