Three-dimensional nonlinear response history analyses for earthquake damage assessment: A reinforced concrete wall building case study

Abstract

Nonlinear dynamic analysis techniques have made significant progress in the last 20 years, providing powerful tools for assessing structural damage and potential building collapse mechanisms. The fact that several reinforced concrete shear wall residential buildings underwent severe structural damage in walls at the lower building levels during the 2010 Maule earthquake (Chile) presents a scientific opportunity to assess the predictive quality of these techniques. The objective of this research is to compare building responses using two completely different three-dimensional nonlinear dynamic models and study in detail the observed damage pattern and wall collapse of one reinforced concrete shear wall building in Santiago, Chile. The first model is a mixed fiber-shell model developed in MATLAB, and the second is a shell finite element model developed in the software DIANA. Results of both models are consistent with the hypothesis that high axial loads trigger a limited ductility failure in critical walls at roof-to-base drift ratios less than 0.34% with little capacity of hysteretic energy dissipation, which contradicts the ductile design philosophy of current code provisions.

Seismic analysis of a modern 14‐story reinforced concrete core wall building system using the BTM‐shell methodology

“…Recent studies have employed shell finite element models of three‐dimensional RC wall building systems to elucidate the observed seismic damage in actual structures during the 2010 Maule, Chile earthquake. Vasquez et al 27 . investigated the dynamic response of an 18‐story building that failed at a relatively low roof drift ratio of 0.34% due to vertical crushing at the base.…”

“…Recent studies have employed shell finite element models of three-dimensional RC wall building systems to elucidate the observed seismic damage in actual structures during the 2010 Maule, Chile earthquake. Vasquez et al 27 investigated the dynamic response of an 18-story building that failed at a relatively low roof drift ratio of 0.34% due to vertical crushing at the base. They simulated the building using a nonlinear shell model and a hybrid model, which combined force-based beam elements with a fiber section for the components at the lower stories that exhibited nonlinearity, and elastic shell elements for the remaining components of the structure.…”

“…The study of Gallardo et al 28 used nonlinear layered shell elements to model another 18-story building that incurred strength degradation at a story drift level of 0.2%, due to poor confinement of the concrete and inadequate protection of the vertical reinforcement against buckling. These models 27,28 assumed linearly elastic behavior for the floor slabs of the buildings. Additionally, the effect of buckling was either ignored at all or it was accounted for in an overly simplified fashion.…”

Lumped damage mechanics as a diagnosis tool of reinforced concrete structures in service: case studies of a former bridge arch and a balcony slab

“…This analysis can also take place in laboratory, using samples of an original structure [5] or with the combination of experimental and numerical analysis, aiming to reproduce the experimental behaviour, as the stress/strain and fatigue [6] or the damage and dynamic properties [7]. Other diagnosis techniques are based only on numerical analysis of the structures such as nonlinear dynamic analysis [8] or on artificial neural networks [9]. One of the most used computational method for modelling the occurrence of damage and monitoring the cracking process in reinforced concrete structures is the finite element method (FEM) [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17].…”

Towards a Sensitivity Analysis in Seismic Risk with Probabilistic Building Exposure Models: An Application in Valparaíso, Chile Using Ancillary Open-Source Data and Parametric Ground Motions

“…However, in the absence of robust alternatives to validate these results, the epistemic uncertainty of the estimated proportions for the walled reinforced concrete and moderate-to-high rise classes would be comparatively higher. It is worth noting that better constraining of the spatial distribution of these types of structures is still necessary because, aside from the differences in the expected counts, their associated uncertainties in the reconnaissance of their ductility levels and construction quality could significantly and differentially drive their seismic vulnerabilities [83,84].…”