Seismic safety of the limited ductility buildings existing in Spain

Abstract

The most important aspects of the design, assessment and safety of the structural typologies existing in Spain are examined in this work. These buildings have mainly waffled slabs or flat beams and many seismic codes do not recommend them in seismic areas. The expected seismic performance of the buildings is evaluated by means of non-linear structural analyses which provide capacity curves. The seismic hazard in the area of the city is described by means of the reduced 5% damped elastic response spectrum. The most important results of the study are the fragility curves calculated for the mentioned building types, which allow obtaining the probability of different damage states of the structures as well as damage probability matrices. The results, which show high vulnerability of the studied building classes, are compared with well design framed structures.