EARTHQUAKE DISASTER MITIGATION USING INNOVATIVE RETROFITTING METHOD

Abstract

The Philippines, because of its geographic location, has been battling the onslaught of natural hazards. About 20 tropical cyclones visit the country every year, active volcanoes erupt within few decades, and earthquakes frequent the country causing damages to structures. Field studies have reported that the casualties and damages due to strong earthquakes have been attributed mainly to collapse of civil engineering structures. Therefore, in order to guarantee the safety of the general public in the event of future earthquakes, it is necessary to study the mechanisms of collapse of these built structures and to provide ways to identify their weak points for the benefit of retrofitting. To address the above issues, a new methodology was developed for the seismic performance assessment of structures. This methodology identifies local failures such as column buckling and connection fracture, which may induce the global system to collapse. In this study, a three-dimensional rigid body-spring method, which can describe the inelastic behavior of a structure and simulate the progressive collapse process, was employed. The sequence of the analysis and results in the form of computer animations offer a real-time assessment of the structural integrity of buildings during earthquakes.

Keywords: Collapse, damage, buildings, rigid body-spring method, simulation