Machine Learning-Based Rapid Post-Earthquake Damage Detection of RC Resisting-Moment Frame Buildings

Abstract

This study proposes a methodology to predict the damage condition of Reinforced Concrete (RC) resisting-moment frame buildings using Machine Learning (ML) methods. Structural members of six hundred RC buildings with varying stories and spans in X and Y directions were designed using the virtual work method. Sixty thousand time-history analyses using ten spectrum-matched earthquake records and ten scaling factors were carried out to cover the structures’ elastic and inelastic behavior. The buildings and earthquake records were split randomly into training data and testing data to predict the damage condition of new ones. In order to reduce bias, the random selection of buildings and earthquake records was carried out several times, and the mean and standard deviation of the accuracy were obtained. Moreover, 27 Intensity Measures (IM) based on acceleration, velocity, or displacement from the ground and roof sensor responses were used to capture the building’s behavior features. The ML methods used IMs, the number of stories, and the number of spans in X and Y directions as input data and the maximum inter-story drift ratio as output data. Finally, seven Machine Learning (ML) methods were trained to predict the damage condition of buildings, finding the best set of training buildings, IMs, and ML methods for the highest prediction accuracy.