Seismic Vulnerability Assessment of Irregular Plan Shape RCC Building

Abstract

The construction practice for the past few decades in Nepal has drastically changed and consciousness among people regarding safer construction has been raised, still there are many RC frames structures especially within the city core which were constructed without proper design. There are many non-engineered RC frame buildings which are highly seismic deficient and may be highly vulnerable in case of earthquake. These buildings may not just be vulnerable in themselves but may also lead to damages and vulnerability of adjacent buildings. The damage of the structure or building is not due to the earthquake parameter; it is also due to the building configuration i.e. irregularity of the building and the methods and material use for construction. The specific objective of this research is to evaluate the seismic performance of the regular and irregular shape configuration building base on the non-linear pushover analysis. All together five building configurations are selected. They are one regular building having 6-bays on each X and Y axis, and other four irregular C, H, L and W configuration by changing in number of bays in X and Y axis. The vulnerability of the selected building is compared by the five different selected time history functions. From the study, for the considered configurations regular building is less vulnerable than other building at complete damage state for all considered earthquake. Among irregular buildings, C shape building is most vulnerable and gradually H, L and W at complete damage state. An overall study showed that the irregular building is most vulnerable to the earthquake than that of regular shape building.