Seismic loss assessment of reinforced concrete moment frames designed to different international codes
Lead Investigator: Max Stephens – University of Auckland
Research Team: Max Stephens, Nicole Buck, Lucas Hogan
Project No. 3170
Executive Summary
Observations of the performance of reinforced concrete (RC) buildings after the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake in Japan showed buildings designed to Japanese standards had less damage and downtime compared to buildings following the 2010/2011 Christchurch earthquakes in New Zealand. To evaluate the underlying reasons for the observed difference in performance, this work compares the seismic performance and resulting damage and losses of reinforced concrete moment frames designed according to various seismic design standards. Specifically, a case study building located in Auckland was designed using New Zealand material properties, but with scaled seismic demands and design requirements based on New Zealand, Japanese, United States, and Chilean standards. These countries were selected because they represent developed countries with modern seismic design standards and, in the case of Chile, Japan, and New Zealand, have recently experienced strong (above design level) earthquakes. First, a case study building was selected and re-designed following the requirements of each country. Auckland (a low seismic region) was selected as the location of the case study building for the purpose of validating numerical models using data from a large-scale shake table experiment on a building that was effectively designed for an Auckland level seismic hazard. Next, a numerical model was developed and validated to assess the seismic performance of each design for a range of seismic hazards. Then, a loss assessment was completed for each building to estimate damage and calculate the expected post- arthquake repair costs of structural and non-structural components. Results from the case-study indicate different design methodologies do not drastically influence the relative seismic performance and expected annual losses of moment frames in low seismic regions. Ongoing work is focused on additional case study buildings located in higher seismic regions to provide further insight into design requirements that result in more resilient building performance including non-structural elements that have the greatest influence on losses considering the design
standards in different countries.