Seismic Analysis and Frp Jacketting of 4 Storey Rc Building

Abstract

In this paper, the specific details of a 4-storey, 3-bay reinforced concrete frame test structure with unreinforced brick masonry (URM) infill walls are described along with estimates of its likely weaknesses with regard to seismic loading. The construction details for this building are typical of construction more than 40 years old in Mediterranean European countries. The concrete frame is shown to be essentially a “weak-column strong-beam frame” which is likely to exhibit poor post- yield hysteretic behaviour. Based on the results of an extensive literature review, the building is expected to have maximum lateral deformation capacities corresponding to about 2% lateral drift. The unreinforced masonry infill walls are likely to begin cracking at much smaller lateral drifts, of the order of 0.3%, and to completely lose their load carrying ability by drifts of between 1% and 2%. Three seismic retrofit schemes were identified, based on the literature review, for further study. The effectiveness of each retrofit scheme will be tested using full-scale pseudo-dynamic tests at the European Laboratory for Structural Assessment (ELSA) at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy. The results of the detailed analyses and tests will be reported elsewhere.