A Practical Rapid Screening Method for Evaluating the Seismic Capacity of Low-rise Reinforced Concrete Buildings

This study describes a quick and efficient screening method to practically evaluate the seismic capacity of low-rise reinforced concrete (RC) buildings composed of members controlled by both shear and flexure. This study describes curves of the required range of strength to predict earthquake damage as a function of the level of ground motion and building seismic capacity. This method was applied to low-rise RC buildings damaged by an actual earthquake to determine the method's validity. The method was also verified by comparing its results to those produced by more detailed methods of seismic capacity evaluation: the Japanese standard for seismic capacity evaluation (second- and third-level procedures), nonlinear static analysis, and nonlinear dynamic analysis. Furthermore, the proposed method was applied to eight low-rise RC buildings in Japan and 38 in Korea; the results were compared with the structural seismic capacity index (I-S = 0.6), which is the Japanese standard for the critical value required to prevent large-scale earthquake damage to structures in the presence of a ground motion acceleration of 0.23 g. The proposed evaluation method was efficient; it permitted a rapid evaluation of a building's seismic capacity and provided a means to calculate simply the degree of structural damage to a building due to a certain earthquake strength based on the seismic capacity category. The proposed method can be easily used to calculate the required strength for a low-rise RC building composed of members controlled by both shear and flexure and produce fundamental data for the earthquake preparedness of low-rise RC buildings.