Seismic vulnerability evaluation of regular reinforced concrete buildings in Brazil through the development of fragility curves

Abstract

This research proposal intends to evaluate the risk that a seismic event can bring to Brazilian reinforced concrete structures, through the development of analytical fragility curves. Brazil, due to its geographical location inside a tectonic plate, built up for many years structures with no design recommendations regarding seismicity events. Brazilian seismic standard, ABNT NBR 15421:2006, is recent and has some gaps when compared with international standards in the subject. Furthermore, recent studies show that Brazilian territory, because of its intraplate faults, have registered seismic events with representative magnitude. If these events happened in urban areas with high demographic density, the structural damage might be catastrophic, since most part of the buildings don't have specific standard design prescriptions for this kind of load. In order to assess the vulnerability that a seismic event can cause to ordinary reinforced concrete structural systems, this research proposal aims to quantify the probability of damage in Brazilian standard buildings with statistical tools. It will be considered ordinary buildings and chosen seismic events that represent Brazilian scenario, and, after a nonlinear analysis of these structures, fragility curves will be developed for different levels of damage of its components. With these results, it is possible to assess how structures designed and built in a specific Brazilian region would behave if they were exposed to a seismic event. (AU)