Analysis of a damaged 12-storey frame-wall concrete building during the 2010 Haiti earthquake — Part II: Nonlinear numerical simulations

Abstract

After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, which destroyed a significant part of the seismically vulnerable city of Port-au-Prince, the country’s capital, a 12-storey reinforced concrete building that behaved well was investigated to understand its dynamic response. This paper completes the experimental work presented in a companion paper, in which the dynamic properties of the building were obtained from ambient vibration tests, and from which a finite-element model was updated. This paper’s main objectives are: (i) to understand the causes that led to the observed structural damage; and (ii) to estimate the likely seismic excitation at the site of the building. Several nonlinear analyses involving various ground motion intensities were conducted and the results were compared with the damage reported during the on-site survey. The numerical models reproduced the observed damages well and helped to explain them. The overall response of the mixed stiff frame–wall structure was clearly dominated by the high stiffness of the shear walls, showing that this type of structural system helps in keeping reasonable interstorey drift levels. Overall, the building’s structure seems to have responded linearly to all the ground motions investigated, but deformation demands imposed to the frame by the shear walls lead to local damages.