An Evaluation of Potential Damage or Collapse of RC Frames and RC Wall Buildings in Strong Earthquakes

Abstract

Many past earthquakes have led to collapses or severe damage to RC building frames, causing fatalities or significant economic losses, highlighting the vulnerability of this earthquake-resisting system. These earthquakes have also demonstrated that wall buildings with a good density of walls would survive strong earthquakes with no damage or acceptable damage levels. This study performs simple nonlinear dynamic analyses of RC buildings using SDOF models to compute a seismic damage index and obtain approximate roof drift ratio values in RC frame and RC wall buildings. Ground motion records from the 1985 Mexico, 2010 Chile, and 2023 Türkiye Earthquakes are employed. The computed damage index and roof drift ratio demands in wall buildings for these earthquakes were significantly smaller than those for frame buildings, indicating acceptable levels of building response for wall buildings. These computed findings are consistent with the observed building behavior in the earthquakes selected for this study. These findings suggest that frame buildings should not be constructed in high seismic-risk regions. Instead, emphasizing wall buildings with a robust density of walls could enable a shift from life safety/collapse prevention considerations to functional recovery design. © 2024, International Association for Earthquake Engineering. All rights reserved.