Seismic vulnerability assessment of low-rise reinforced concrete buildings

The main objective of this study is the development of a simple and reliable method for identifying structural vulnerability of low-rise reinforced concrete buildings. The desired attribute of the method is that it enable quick evaluation by construction professionals without extensive specialized training and also lead to correct identification of most of the vulnerable construction. Building database from Turkey including Erzincan (1992), Dinar (1995), Ceyhan (1998) and Marmara (1999) and Bolu-Duzce (1999) regions are combined and evaluated to obtain ranges of material and geometrical properties of variables that would encompass the majority of the building structures in the Turkey. Based on gathered information from the Turkey database, approximately 6000 cases were analyzed to determine the building drift in the event of an earthquake with an effective peak acceleration of 0.5 g. Approximately 2000 cases were analyzed to determine the ranges of shear-strength and base-shear-strength coefficients. The results obtained from the analysis of the building frames were examined and generalized using three different criteria to estimate: (1) mean drift ratio, (2) base-shear-strength coefficient, and (3) shear-strength coefficient. These expressions were tested on the database from Duzce-Bolu-Kaynasli. It was observed that the method considering mean drift ratio gave satisfactory results.