Performance-Based Seismic Evaluation and Retrofitting of Historic Unreinforced Concrete Wall Buildings With Interior Steel Frames

Abstract

Performance-based seismic evaluation of historical constructions is a challenge due to the difficulty of their structural analysis that accurately captures their nonlinear behavior. This paper focuses on the use of 3-D nonlinear finite element method for static pushover analysis of unreinforced concrete (URC) wall buildings with interior steel frames for seismic evaluation and retrofit design. Three such historical school buildings with different levels of structural complexity were modeled in detail using advanced finite element programs to obtain their linear and nonlinear behavior under monotonically increasing lateral loads. The capacity curves obtained from pushover analyses were used for performance evaluation using the Capacity Spectrum Method. Retrofit design verification for one of the buildings was performed using the same approach. The results show that despite its involved modeling process and computational expense, pushover analysis of buildings with URC/URM elements using 3-D nonlinear finite element method can become a powerful practical tool for improved seismic performance evaluation and retrofit design.