Comparison of seismic assessment guidelines using a case study reinforced concrete wall building

Abstract

There are several seismic assessment standards and guidelines available around the world that can be used to identify vulnerable buildings. The assessment procedures and criteria in these documents are different, and thus, the assessment outcomes for a particular building, if assessed using different standards, can also be different. In this study, provisions of the linear static and non-linear static analysis procedures of three prominent seismic assessment documents, the American Society of Civil Engineers /Structural Engineers Institute standard ASCE 41 (2017) [1], the New Zealand Seismic Assessment Guidelines (2017) [2], and the European Standard EN 1998-3 (2005) [3] (also known as Eurocode 8 Part-3 or EC8-3) are discussed and compared, highlighting some of their similarities and differences. A reinforced concrete (RC) wall building used in FEMA P-2006 (2018) [4] for demonstration of ASCE 41 provisions is taken as the case study building for comparison of the assessment provisions. The linear and non-linear static analysis procedures specified in the three documents are applied to the case study building and the assessment outcomes are compared. The assessment results are found to vary across the analysis methods and guidelines. However, the critical governing vulnerability for the building is found to be the same. It is observed that with the simplifying modelling assumptions, coupled with the inherent conservatism in the assessment using linear static analysis, a more conservative outcome is obtained using the linear static methods as compared to the non-linear static methods. Overall, EC8-3 provisions are found to be the most conservative of all three guidelines considered for the assessment of the example building.