Damage accumulation modelling of two reinforced concrete buildings under seismic sequences

The extent of earthquake damage depends solely on the seismicity, site conditions and vulnerability of the building stock in a region. Hence, studies to assess the seismic behavior of building stocks with similar vulnerabilities are important to mitigate seismic risk in earthquake-prone regions. This study aims to simulate the seismic behavior of selected reinforced concrete (RC) school buildings by modelling damage accumulation under multiple earthquakes sequence. The observed data of two RC school buildings heavily damaged after the 2011 Van earthquake sequence in Turkey, namely, the Gedikbulak and Alaköy schools is used. Among these two school buildings, the Gedikbulak school building collapsed immediately after the main excitation, while the Alaköy school building withstood several seismic sequences, suffering heavy damages. In this study, three-dimensional numerical models that can consider the deterioration effects are developed and the capacities of the buildings were evaluated by conducting a force-based adaptive pushover procedure. Additionally, non-linear dynamic analyses were conducted using the concrete plastic damage model. Both degrading and conventional material models were used to examine the structural response under multiple ground motion sequences. The hysteretic behaviors of the studied buildings are presented. Consequently, analytical results are well correlated with the reconnaissance studies and neither of the considered structures are found to satisfy the design performance level.