RESEARCH ARTICLE
Suitability of Current Assessment Techniques to Retrodict the Seismic Damage of Buildings: A Case Study in Van, Turkey
Viorel Popa, Radu Văcăreanu*, Vasile Oprisoreanu, Emil Albotă, Dietlinde Köber
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2015Volume: 9
First Page: 330
Last Page: 343
Publisher ID: TOCIEJ-9-330
DOI: 10.2174/1874149501509010330
Article History:
Received Date: 19/10/2014Revision Received Date: 4/11/2014
Acceptance Date: 9/12/2014
Electronic publication date: 28/5/2015
Collection year: 2015
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Two strong earthquakes hit the region of Van (Turkey) in 2012, generating major losses. A large part of the building stock was damaged causing the evacuation of the residents. A post-earthquake investigation team dispatched by the UNESCO through the IPRED platform, six month after the earthquakes, observed the damage state in some still standing buildings. Ten buildings having different structural characteristics were observed. Slight structural damage and severe non-structural damage were observed in three multi-storey apartment buildings, being evacuated at the time of the investigation. Despite the slight structural damage, two multi-storey reinforced concrete shear wall buildings were listed for demolition based on the results of the post-earthquake rapid assessment. These two buildings were recently built based on modern seismic design regulations. The design blueprints were available to the investigation team with the support of the local community of Van. Various rapid post-earthquake investigation techniques applied by the investigation team generated contradictory results. A comprehensive seismic assessment was carried out to retrodict the observed seismic damage. Various methods were applied starting from simple rapid assessment techniques to more elaborated structural analysis based on nonlinear dynamic procedure. In the latter case, strength and stiffness degrading hysteretic models were applied and the non-structural masonry walls were considered in the analytical model. This paper presents the results of these structural analyses in comparison with the observed damage on site. Conclusions regarding the suitability of the applied seismic assessment techniques to retrodict the damage level of the investigated structures are drawn. Some findings of the post-earthquake investigation team are presented as well.