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“...of the most harmful and fatal natural disasters for humans. Over the last few years, numerous earthquakes were responsible for the death and injury of thousands of people as well as the damage or even collapse of countless buildings. In particular, some reinforced concrete (RC) buildings, which compose a large part of the worldwide construction portfolio, presented some deficiencies and poor response when subjected to the seismic actions [1,2]. Past and recent international structural design codes do not consider the structural contribution of the infill masonry walls in the assessment of the global response of structures. Infill panels are widely used in construction for many reasons, including as partition walls, acoustic and thermal purposes, among others. When subjected to earthquakes, the infill walls tend to interact with the surrounding frame providing additional lateral stiffness and strength to the building. However, with the increment of the peak ground accelerations different...”
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“...the United Nations Development Programme, Nepal, occupies the eleventh position on the list of most vulnerable countries in terms of seismic risk [10]. Recently, a quick and uncontrolled urban growth of the number of RC buildings was observed in Nepal. Consequently, notorious difficulties of the government in implementing building design codes accounting for seismic loads and/or the contribution of the infill masonry walls to the response has been lacking in Nepal. It is worth noting that most of the residential buildings and some important buildings, such as schools or government buildings were not designed according to the most recent seismic design codes. The lack of planning and structural knowledge by the structural designers and community at the time when these buildings were designed resulted in the construction of vulnerable structures when exposed to intense seismic ground shaking due to earthquakes [11].
Shaky a and Kawan [12] reported that most of the damaged RC buildings, after...”
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“...induced ground shaking. The vulnerability of the structures
Num: 3.80 Hz Exp: 3.88 Hz
(a)
Num: 4.09 Hz
Exp: 4.02 Hz
(b)
Fig. 5 Numerical model modes of vibrations and natural frequencies: a Mode 1 (transverse); b Mode 2 (longitudinal); and c Mode 3 (torsion)
(c)
is assessed by comparing the engineering response parameter values obtained from nonlinear dynamic time history response analysis with limits imposed by international codes and other recommendations. The structure is considered to be vulnerable if the response parameters exceed the limits proposed in codes. Otherwise, the structural performance is deemed acceptable. If the structure is found to be vulnerable,
Table 3 Numerical model: input material properties adopted for the infill masonry walls
Elasticity modulus Em (GPa) Compressive strength/m0 (MPa) Diagonal tensile strength/, (MPa) Shear stress r0 (MPa) Maximum shear stress hnax (Mpo Coefficient of friction q Maximum stress em Ultimate stress eu Closing strain Al
230 2.3 0.575...”
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“...sub-sections, the methodology adopted to assess the seismic vulnerability of the structure will be presented and the results will be presented and discussed in detail.
3.2 Methodology
The seismic assessment methodology used is based on the analysis of the peak inter-storey drift ratios reached by the different floors of the structure during the non-linear time history response analysis. These peak inter-storey drift ratios are compared with global drift ratio limits suggested by international codes and existing literature that are tied to specific structural performance levels or damage state levels.
In this study, the damage scale proposed by Rossetto and Elnashai [26], also known as the Homogenized Reinforced Concrete Scale (HRC-scale) is used. The HRC-scale was developed from different data sources and for different structural systems that were subjected to various historical and simulated earthquakes. Table 4 shows that the HRC-scale classifies the damage into seven damage levels, based...”
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