Fragility and expected seismic damage in reinforced concrete framed buildings. A probabilistic approach

Abstract

Fragility and damage curves are basic tools for seismic risk analysis. These curves are essential to estimate the expected damage levels for different risk scenarios, just defined by earthquakes with a certain annual exceedance rate, or by design earthquakes. Despite the uncertainties in the expected seismic actions, and in the geometric and resistant properties of the buildings, most of the approaches proposed in recent decades are deterministic, and the results are often interpreted as mean values of many likely scenarios. This article firstly reviews a deterministic approach based on capacity curves and capacity spectra, which uses a parametric model for capacity curves and a novel way of considering damage, which includes the contributions to damage of the deformation and the one due to the energy dissipation. Afterwards, the problem is formulated with a probabilistic approach. A symmetric reinforced concrete building with 4 stories and 4 spans is used as case study, but the method can be applied to other building typologies and to other structural geometries. This work highlights the greater robustness, versatility, richness and relevance of the probabilistic approach, which, besides, has an increasing benefit/cost ratio, due to the huge progress that computers and software have attained, and are keeping on achieving.

ARK: http://id.caicyt.gov.ar/ark:/s25457012/qae89bhyb