Post-event evaluation of residual capacity of building structures based on seismic monitoring

Abstract

Structural capacity evaluation is essential to support the safety assessment and decision-making process of existing building structures after disastrous earthquakes. Current post-earthquake evaluation practices rely more on manual on-site inspections, which are labor-intensive and subjective. A simulation-based capacity evaluation could be a desired alternative when numerical models for these buildings are prior-identified and updated using structural health monitoring data. This study proposes a procedure for identifying the capacity curve and assessing the residual capacity of existing structures using seismic monitoring data. The mass-normalized spectral acceleration-displacement (AD format) relation is first defined in a single-degree-of-freedom system. Considering the post-event deterioration of structural capacity, a data-driven reduction factor for the capacity curve is introduced to quantify the potential structural degradation. With the aid of the updated capacity curve, the residual capacity of the earthquake-damaged structure is then predicted via incremental dynamic analysis. The feasibility and accuracy of the proposed method are analyzed via numerical simulations and further validated using a large-scale shaking table test and a real-world instrumented building. Results show that the proposed method could identify the capacity curve of the existing structure from seismic monitoring data and estimate the hysteresis responses with a favorable agreement. It could provide the residual capacity of the target structure and quantify its capacity reduction, which can informatively facilitate the post-earthquake structural safety management.