Seismic fragility of reinforced concrete buildings with hollow-core flooring systems

Hollow-core flooring systems were damaged in Wellington buildings during the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake (7.8 Mw) and have been shown to be susceptible to undesirable failure mechanisms (loss of seating, negative moment, and positive moment failure modes) at low drift demands. These undesirable damage mechanisms have also been observed in sub-assembly and super-assembly laboratory testing of hollow-core flooring systems and the test data obtained has enhanced the state-of-the-art knowledge of the probable seismic behaviour of hollow-core floor units. In this study, using currently available sub-assembly test data, fragility functions are defined for hollow-core flooring systems. Furthermore, the proposed fragility functions are combined with fragility information derived from nonlinear dynamic analyses for two eight-storey bare-frame reinforced concrete (RC) buildings designed based on New Zealand standards. This study shows that, in comparison with RC buildings with flooring systems that are not susceptible to gravity load failures, RC buildings with vulnerable hollow-core floors have a significantly higher likelihood of exceeding the collapse prevention limit state, as defined in this study.