Numerical Study on the Relevance of Columns Hidden Failure Modes in the Seismic Capacity of Non-Ductile RC Frames

Abstract

In simplified seismic structural analyses, not all the deterioration modes are adequately considered. This work discusses the relation among the hidden failure modes of columns of non-ductile RC building frames and their global collapse mechanism. With this aim, a numerically efficient model is developed and implemented in OpenSEES. Two benchmark problems are analyzed with this model: the well-known Van Nuys Hotel and a prototype building designed for gravity loads only; in this last case, the results are compared with experiments on a one-third scale model. The obtained results confirm that simplified models grossly overestimate the building capacity.

Influence of axial compression ratio in building columns

“…The breach of actual seismic codes and standards by several existing buildings has been noticed and studied by some authors worldwide (Abou-Elfath et al, 2017;Domínguez et al, 2016;Falcone et al, 2019;López-Almansa et al, 2013;Miano et al, 2022;Quintana Gallo et al, 2022;Requena-Garcia-Cruz et al, 2022;Tena-Colunga et al, 2022), and accordingly, the collapse risk of these buildings against earthquake occurrence (Aboutaha et al, 1999;Alfarah et al, 2020;Pampanin & Akguzel, 2011;Ricci et al, 2011;Singh Rawat, 2017) has also been noticed. Furthermore, there are RC columns in Moment-Resisting Frame (MRF) buildings having such high ACR values that undergo excessive DCR, still for vertical loads, as reported by a recent study (Villar-Salinas et al, 2021).…”