Assessing Seismic Fragility of Low-Rise RC Buildings by means of Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA)

Abstract

The modern era witnessed an urbanization and economic growth concentrated in urban areas. Despite an increase in welfare, this receives a greater threat when an earthquake occurs. This research aims to assess the structural risk of low to medium-rise reinforced concrete building structures, commonly built in developing countries. This research was carried out by performing an incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) od an existing building model. In this analysis, the structural model was given a set of dynamic earthquake loads which were increased in magnitude according to certain scale rules until the structure experienced nonlinear behavior and reached a near collapse condition. Five artificial accelerogram recordings were applied on the structure after matching with the spectral response of the target location of the structure. From the analysis, the IDA curves were obtained which describes the global dynamic behavior of the structure, namely displacement due to earthquake lateral loads. Then the damage limits were determined on the IDA curve based on the HAZUS criteria. Then the seismic risk was expressed by constructing a seismic fragility curve. This curve states the probability of exceeding certain damage limits due to variation in earthquake intensity during the service life of the structure.