COMPARATIVE STUDY ON CODE-BASED LINEAR EVALUATION OF AN EXISTING R.C. SCHOOL BUILDING BEFORE AND AFTER 1992 EGYPT EARTHQUAKE

Farghaly, Ahmed Abdelrahem; Abdallah, Ali Mohamed

doi:10.21608/jesaun.2012.114534

COMPARATIVE STUDY ON CODE-BASED LINEAR EVALUATION OF AN EXISTING R.C. SCHOOL BUILDING BEFORE AND AFTER 1992 EGYPT EARTHQUAKE

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

¹ Civil and Architectural Building, Faculty of Industrial Education, Sohag University, Egypt

² Civil Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Kafrelsheikh University. Kafrelsheikh , Egypt

10.21608/jesaun.2012.114534

Abstract

Building codes did not include requirements for special seismic detailing of reinforced concrete structures until the 1970's when several earthquakes demonstrated the need for more ductile design. These buildings are vulnerable to numerous failure modes including: failure of column lap splices; strong beam/weak column failures; captive column failure; punching shear failures in flat plate slabs; and shear and axial load failure of columns with wide transverse reinforcement spacing. A discontinuity in stiffness and strength at the bottom story, due to a soft story, often results in a concentration of earthquake damage at the building base. Several examples of past earthquake behavior are given in this report as well as discussion of various retrofit options. Gravity load designed old school buildings had been heavily damaged by the October, 1992, Egypt earthquake in the regions near the epicenter. Most of the victims were school students because there was no previous knowledge of the ideal behavior dealing with earthquakes, the case that leads to the students' rushing into corridors and stairs. As a result of the weakness of some parapets of corridors, some students fell into the playground. Moreover, the existence of only one stair at most schools cause the accumulation of students over the stair, which led to the death of some students. Samples of old school buildings in Egypt were selected for evaluation to determine the deficient aspects of these buildings. Finally, the research sheds the light on the best public behaviour against earthquakes. The aim of this study is to investigate the code-based procedure of seismic performance assessments of existing buildings and to determine the seismic performance levels of a case study reinforced concrete building, which represents typical existing building stock in Egypt, as well as comparing the consequences of linear static analysis procedures.

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