Probabilistic Evaluation of Post-Earthquake Functional Recovery of a Seismically Isolated RC Building

Abstract

All earthquakes throughout history have taught us that damage to non-structural elements and content has serious repercussions on the direct economic cost of damage and functionality. In essential buildings such as hospitals, rapid functional recovery is essential to safeguard the lives of the occupants and the injured who arrive after the earthquake. This study presents the detailed evaluation of the functional recovery of a RC seismically isolated 8 story hospital building located in an area of high seismicity. The study is carried out using the probabilistic analytical framework F-Rec, which has been recently proposed in the literature for the evaluation of the functional recovery of buildings after an earthquake. This framework complements the FEMA P-58 performance evaluation methodology allowing a complete and detailed evaluation of post-earthquake functionality, duration of damage and the path of functional recovery, considering structural and non-structural elements and content. In this study, a non-linear model of the building is created in OpenSees and the seismic response is studied for three hazard scenarios, Service Level Earthquake (SLE), Design Based Earthquake (DBE) and Maximum Considered Earthquake (MCE). Based on the results of the non-linear analyses, the damage losses are calculated using the FEMA P-58 tool, while the building recovery process is evaluated using the F-Rec framework. The efficient functional recovery time and route are analyzed for each scenario. The results show that the F-Rec framework is a viable tool for the evaluation of the post-earthquake functionality of isolated hospital buildings, but that there is a need to develop specific fragility and recovery curves for medical equipment.