Earthquake Performance of Reinforced-Concrete Shear-Wall Structure Using Nonlinear Methods

In earthquake engineering, the performance-based design method is used to determine the expected performance level of structures under an earthquake effect. The level of performance is related to the damage situation that could occur in the structure after the earthquake. In performance-based structural design, it is predicted that more than one damage level can emerge under one earthquake effect. In this study, the seismic behavior of a reinforced-concrete shear-wall building that collapsed during the 2003 Bingol earthquake was investigated by nonlinear static analysis and nonlinear dynamic analysis. The selected reinforced-concrete shear-wall structure is located in Bingol, Turkey. Local code was considered for assessing a seismic performance evaluation of the selected reinforced-concrete shear-wall building. The performance goals of the reinforced-concrete shear-wall structure were evaluated by applying the pushover (incremental equivalent earthquake load) method and procedures of the code and nonlinear dynamic analysis. According to the code, the reinforced-concrete shear-wall building was not expected to satisfy life safety performance levels under a design earthquake. In this study, one collapsed building was selected in order to test the reliability and usability of performance analysis methods under different earthquakes.