Seismic Collapse Performance of a Full-Scale Concrete Building with Lightly Reinforced Columns

Brittle failure of lightly reinforced concrete columns is one of the primary reasons for partial or total collapse of substandard existing buildings subjected to earthquake loading. This study presents collapse performance of a full-scale building that was performed to gain insight into the seismic behavior and the collapse mechanisms of nonductile buildings with lightly reinforced concrete columns. The three-story building was tested under displacement-controlled quasi-static reversed cyclic loading followed by a lateral pushover loading up to realization of the total collapse. In addition to the poor reinforcement details, columns had high axial load-to-axial capacity ratios as also observed in many existing substandard buildings. During the test, severe structural damage was observed at 0.9% first-story drift ratio in the cyclic part of the lateral loading and the brittle total collapse of the building took place during the pushover loading at 1.45% first-story drift ratio. In this paper, after the introduction of the test campaign, the formation of structural damage and collapse mechanisms are discussed. In addition, an attempt to predict the behavior and performance of the test building is made by using a column model that considers flexural, slip, and shear deformations. Finally, the obtained analytical results are compared with the experimental observations and results.