Assessing the Seismic Performance of a Five-Story Premodern RC Building in Albania using Pushover and Time History Analyses

Abstract

Albania is undergoing continuous development, especially in terms of economic and society. The country has witnessed a notable increase in population growth, leading to a rise in construction activity with new infrastructure projects expanding daily where the equilibrium in the demand-offer ratio is not consistently upheld. However, a considerable portion of Albania’s current stock comprises of structures designed and build during the communist era. Additionally, our country is well known to be in a seismic active region which has been hit by several earthquakes considering the recent one on November 26, 2019. Therefore, this study targets to examine the structural performance of a 5-story template reinforced concrete building in Albania designed during 1980’s. Using advanced finite element method analysis (FEM) software Zeus-NL, the study employs two performance earthquake engineering methods, Pushover and Time History analysis. The load bearing capacity of the building is estimated by the means of pushover analysis under uniform, inverted triangular and modal loading patterns in both orthogonal directions. Additionally, Time History Analysis was then performed to calculate the demand of each direction of the building. Based on the FEMA guidelines, the Immediate Occupancy (IO), Life Safety (LS) a Collapse Prevention (CP) is determined in the capacity cures. In the end, a comparison between the static curves and the dynamic response of the structure has been carried out. Finally, conclusions as well as recommendations for further studies on this typology of buildings