Analytical study on seismic strengthening of existing reinforced concrete buildings by implementation of energy absorbers

Abstract

Retrofitting of reinforced concrete (RC) buildings is generally made by jacketing of columns and/or implementing shear walls. However, this method increases the building mass and requires foundation strengthening which is not easy to apply. Recently, strengthening by absorbing the applied energy to the building during an earthquake by energy absorbers has become popular. In this study, an analytical study of an energy dissipation system for seismic strengthening of existing RC buildings is presented. The study was conducted to investigate the implementation of an energy absorber to the bracing system of an existing building located in Antakya/Turkiye. One of the considerable challenges is to establish the optimal design to retrofit buildings against the effect of predicted earthquakes with minimal disturbance to the structure and residents. The proposed system aims to provide high protection of the structure during severe earthquakes by controlling the maximum inter-story drifts. The used system performs as a bilinear hysteretic device. To investigate the performance of the proposed design and configuration, nonlinear time-history analyses were carried out on an 8-Story building. The main parameters which are Displacement, Inter Story Drift Ratio, Acceleration, and Input Energy are studied according to the different configurations. The obtained results showed that the seismic responses of the strengthened structures were significantly higher than the original structures. The maximum displacement and drift reduction values of the strengthened building were between 70% to 80%, the maximum acceleration reduction values were between 4% to 20%, and the input energy levels decreased between about 64% and 70%. © 2023 MIM Research Group. All rights reserved.