Seismic Performance and Retrofitting of Prefabricated Industrial RC Buildings Using Conventional Steel Braces

Prefabricated reinforced concrete (RC) structures constitute the majority of industrial buildings in Turkey. Such buildings experienced heavy damage and some totally collapsed during the devastating earthquakes that occurred in Turkey within the last three decades. Similar problems arose in the latest earthquake sequence (Mw 7.9 and 7.8) occurred on February 6^th, 2023 in Kahramanmaras. Many industrial buildings poorly designed and constructed to older codes partially or totally collapsed. This paper describes seismic details, performances, and potential retrofit schemes of a widely used prefabricated building type defined as single-story frames with columns hinged at top (almost 70% of the inventory). Retrofitting is inevitable due to revised regulations (major changes were made on behavior factor). Since industrial facilities require minimizing downtime for occupants, using steel bracing systems is mostly preferred. These systems could also be cost-effective. /,X, or Chevron vertical steel bracing configurations are used for increasing the strength and stiffness. Since the amount of transverse rebars are insufficient and they have 90-degree end hoops (instead of 135-degree hoop), ductility has always been a concern and should be improved by CFRP wraps. Within the scope of the study, case studies (designed and implemented) related to bracing retrofit are given. Pushover analyses are used in the performance evaluations.