The
methodologies developed for the seismic vulnerability assessment of existing buildings will
be applied to a group of state owned buildings. Those
buildings identified as seismically vulnerable will be classified according to their structural
parameters, types of weaknesses they display, and the geotechnical parameters
at the site. One building in each group, not exceeding 5 will
be rehabilitated by using the rapid retrofit techniques and methodologies, which
will also be developed in this study.
Structural engineering
deals with the safe and economic design of structural systems. To this end
the engineer must tackle the important task of representing physical
reality as a mathematical abstraction that will permit him to predict with
confidence the way that the assembly of components will behave when subjected to external
effects. The word “behavior” encloses a number of connotations.
First, the deformations caused by the effects must be calculated so
that steps can be made to limit them to acceptable
levels. Similarly, forces, stresses, or long-term strains must all be calculated, or
the strength of individual members must be determinable so that
these can be compared with analysis results. Analysis, on the other hand,
depends on a number of simplifying assumptions because otherwise even simple
structures would require lengthy and expensive calculations.
For earthquake ground motions
this situation is even more complicated because of the additional
sources of uncertainty such as three-dimensional effects, influence of
“non-structural” components, and spatial variability. For improved
understanding of dynamic structural response, engineers have three
recourses:
-
Build computer
models of variable complexity and conduct numerical experiments,
leading to identification of important modalities of
response,
-
Build scaled
laboratory models, subjecting them to static or quasi dynamic or even
true dynamic loads, matching observations against numerical
predictions,
-
Place
sufficient measuring devices on full-scale structures, and record
their response when subjected to the real experiment that an
earthquake is. This way, the correctness of any theory or idealization
can be calibrated.
For this reason, the
incorporation of the building seismic monitoring component into the
project proposal is considered as being
necessary.
