Guidelines to estimate Earthquake Loads on Buildings in Slum Areas

Abstract

Slums and non-engineering buildings are scattered in Egyptian cities. Here comes the challenge facing the state, including the engineering bodies, to determine the danger level to the residents’ lives, and to develop solutions and priorities for facing risks including earthquakes. The large size of slums necessitates the development of a simplified way for classifying structures in terms of their seismic resistance. This research proposes a simplified method to estimate the earthquake loads to be used for estimating the ability of such buildings to withstand the main and seismic loads, allowing the determination of the initial degree of danger on its condition. The proposed guideline ignores the effect of participation of all columns in resisting earthquake loads, especially in the absence of lateral stiffness members, which is the general condition of slums and focuses on the external columns only that are the most exposed to the seismic load. Also, this method considers only the resulting seismic vertical reactions. The validity of the proposed method was tested experimentally and analytically, while its accuracy was verified through a field study by comparing the results of its application on two buildings in Sharkia, Egypt. Numerical models for these buildings were built to determine their resistance under seismic loads. The study concluded how to predict the risks affecting such buildings using a simple process. This could be used to establish controls to re-planning the buildings of existing slum cities to ensure the safety or at least reduce the risk of collapses against moderate earthquakes.

Keywords

• dynamic analysis
• building assessment
• seismic design
• structural evaluation