Seismic Response of Precast Industrial Buildings

Abstract

The most common structural system of the precast industrial buildings in Europe consists of an assemblage of cantilever columns tied together with beams. Typical beam-to-column connection in these structures is constructed with steel dowels. Although this system has been used for decades, its seismic response was poorly understood, which reflected in ambiguous code requirements and conservative approach. Therefore, along with innovative precast structural solutions (not discussed in this paper), this system was the main focus of the continuous European research in the past two decades. The key results of this vast research effort (including unprecedented cyclic, PSD and shake table experiments on large-scale structures) led by the associations of the precast producers in Europe and the Politecnico di Milano are presented and discussed in this paper. The details are provided for the work done at the University of Ljubljana. The results of these research projects led to some major modifications and improvements of the relevant chapter in Eurocode 8, when this was evolving from the initial informative annex to the final code provision. Refined FEM models for the complex behaviour of the dowel beam-to-column connections as well as macro models for the post-critical analysis of the complete structures were proposed. Single-storey and multi-storey structures were investigated and the design formulas to estimate high shear and storey-force amplification due to higher-modes effect in multi-storey structures were derived. The design guidelines for connections of precast structures under seismic actions were prepared. Systematic risk studies were done indicating that this structural system can be safe in seismic regions if all Eurocode 8 provisions as well as the recommendations based on the presented research are considered. These include the capacity design of the connections. Behaviour factor for such precast systems was studied and the values initially proposed in preEC8 were modified

Numerical investigation of the resistance of precast RC pinned beam‐to‐column connections under shear loading

“…Extended research on the seismic response of precast industrial buildings is also presented by several researchers (Fischinger et al . , Apostolska et al . ).…”

Evaluation of out‐of‐plane seismic performance of column‐to‐column precast concrete cladding panels in one‐storey industrial buildings

“…As addressed in EN 1998‐1, precast structures generally attain ductility similar to RC structures; besides this, owing to the flexibility of the considered structural typology, the design is typically governed by lateral displacement control and code limitations on second order effects rather than material strain limits. Other authors also addressed the higher relevance of drift and slenderness limitations requirements compared to the behaviour factor in these types of structures.…”

“…In recent years, experimental work has been conducted to investigate the performance of cladding‐to‐structure subassemblies, and design recommendations have been derived accordingly, mainly concerning the in‐plane behaviour of such systems. In the case of out‐of‐plane loading, the seismic demand on cladding elements and connections is determined following building code formulae for nonstructural elements (clause 4.3.5 in EN 1998‐1 and clause 13.3 in ASCE 7).…”

Seismic collapse assessment of new European single-story RC precast buildings with weak connections

“…For this reason, in the last years, experimental studies have been performed to determine the capacity of the more spread connection types (Dal Lago et al 2017;Magliulo et al 2014aMagliulo et al , 2015aPsycharis and Mouzakis 2012a, b), related numerical models have been developed (Sousa et al 2020;Titi et al 2018;Zoubek et al 2013) and new connections have been proposed (Belleri et al 2013(Belleri et al , 2017Magliulo et al 2017). As a consequence, new design formulae (Zoubek et al 2015) for these connections have been provided, which are not yet included in code provisions and spread design guidelines (Fischinger et al 2014). Recently Beilic et al (2017) performed a comprehensive study on the fragility of single-story RC precast structures, designed according to old and current Italian codes: both column flexural collapse and beam-to-column connection collapse were taken into account, with a refined structural modelling, considering both frictional (old) and doweled beam-to-column connections.…”