Seismic performance of RC buildings subjected to past earthquakes in Turkey

This study aims to evaluate seismic performance of existing low and mid-rise reinforced concrete buildings by comparing their displacement capacities and displacement demands under selected ground motions experienced in Turkey as well as demand spectrum provided in 2007 Turkish Earthquake Code for design earthquake with 10% probability of exceedance in 50 years for soil class Z3. It should be noted that typical residential buildings are designed according to demand spectrum of 10% probability of exceedance in 50 years. Three RC building sets as 2-, 4- and 7-story, are selected to represent reference low-and mid-rise buildings located in the high seismicity region of Turkey. The selected buildings are typical beam-column RC frame buildings with no shear walls. The outcomes of detailed field and archive investigation including approximately 500 real residential RC buildings established building models to reflect existing building stock. Total of 72 3-D building models are constructed from the reference buildings to include the effects of some properties such as structural irregularities, concrete strength, seismic codes, structural deficiencies, transverse reinforcement detailing, and number of story on seismic performance of low and mid-rise RC buildings. Capacity curves of building sets are obtained by nonlinear static analyses conducted in two principal directions, resulting in 144 models. The inelastic dynamic characteristics are represented by "equivalent" Single-Degree-of- Freedom (ESDOF) systems using obtained capacity curves of buildings. Nonlinear time history analysis is used to estimate displacement demands of representative building models idealized with (ESDOF) systems subjected to the selected ground motion records from past earthquakes in Turkey. The results show that the significant number of pre-modern code 4- and 7-story buildings exceeds LS performance level while the modern code 4- and 7-story buildings have better performances. The findings obviously indicate the existence of destructive earthquakes especially for 4- and 7-story buildings. Significant improvements in the performance of the buildings per modern code are also obvious in the study. Almost one third of pre-modern code buildings is exceeding LS level during records in the past earthquakes. This observation also supports the building damages experienced in the past earthquake events in Turkey.