Seismic Retrofitting of Dual Structural Systems—A Case Study of an Educational Building in Croatia

Abstract

On 29 December 2020, a devastating Mw6.4 earthquake struck near the town of Petrinja, Croatia. The main earthquake was preceded by a Mw4.9 foreshock the day before. The earthquakes caused extensive damage to buildings, especially historic buildings made of unreinforced masonry but also to buildings of other typologies and to critical infrastructure. Today, recovery efforts in Croatia focus primarily on reconstruction and seismic retrofitting. Family homes and public, cultural, educational, and other facilities are top priorities. In this paper, a comprehensive study of existing building in the educational sector is presented as a case study. The seismic performance of the building is evaluated using numerical methods, first for the as-built condition and then for the retrofitted building. For each condition, the collapse mechanisms of the building were determined and critical structural elements were identified. The presented retrofit strategy of the dual structural system consisting of RC frame system and masonry walls aims to reduce the displacements of the RC frame system to a level sufficient to prevent the early brittle failure of the concrete. Additionally, the discrepancies when using different modelling approaches are discussed.