SEISMIC PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF
EXISTING RC STRUCTURES ACCORDING TO THE
JAPANESE STANDARD AND RETROFITTING WITH
PRESTRESSED PRECAST CFT AND FRC BRACES
Ahmet Utku YAZGAN*
MEE06003

Supervisor: Minehiro NISHIYAMA**ABSTRACT
Turkey has frequently suffered major damaging earthquakes in this century. Still, there are thousands ofapartment buildings in earthquake-prone regions in Turkey that need the evaluation and seismic
rehabilitation. So that, the seismic capacity of an existing RC school building at Turkey have been
evaluated according to the 1st and 2nd screening level as it is represented at Japanese guidelines for seismic
retrofitting of existing RC buildings, 2001. Once the seismic capacity of the building is evaluated and it
was found that the seismic indexes are within 0.19 – 0.77, a simple seismic strengthening method of a
new brace system using concrete filled tube and fiber reinforced concrete is analysed as a retrofitting
scheme. Either of these braces is a single line element and easily placed in a frame.
Keywords: Earthquake, Existing RC Buildings, Seismic Evaluation, Seismic Retrofitting,Concrete Braces
INTRODUCTION
Turkey is the one of the countries with the most rapid process of urbanization in the world. This rapid
urbanization created by the population coming from the rural areas increases the number of large cities on
the one hand and causes serious problems from the viewpoint of sound urbanization in the large
metropolises on the other hand. As a result of this, the recent earthquakes that hit the densely populated
urban areas resulted in a large-scale destruction and loss of life (Gülkan et al., 2000).
The most effective way to reduce human casualties is through the retrofit of the existing building
stock. Earthquake damaged structures may need strengthening along with the repair of damaged parts(post-earthquake rehabilitation) so that their seismic performance can be improved. Also, structures notconforming to the current code may also require rehabilitation (pre-earthquake rehabilitation) so that they
can satisfy the provisions of the current code (Buyukozturk et al, 2000).
On the other hand it is of critical importance that the structures that need seismic retrofitting are
identified correctly, and an optimal retrofitting is conducted in a cost effective fashion to reduce thevulnerability of the building stock. As a result, it is an urgent need to develop an easy and fast evaluation
method and cost effective, applicable and efficient retrofitting techniques for the improvement of the large
vulnerable building stock in Turkey.

*Civil Engineer, Ministry of Public Works and Settlement, General Directorate of Disaster Affairs,
Earthquake Research Department, Turkey**Assoc. Prof. Minehiro Nishiyama , Dept. of Urban and Environmental Engineering, Kyoto University,Japan1

JAPANESE STANDARD FOR SEISMIC PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
Three screening levels have been introduced in the Japanese standard (2001) for seismic capacity
evaluation. Each level consists of a set of procedures to evaluate the basic seismic index E0, which is thebasic seismic performance of the building. The basic seismic index E0 shall be calculated for each story
based on the ultimate strength, failure mode and ductility of the building. In a n-story building, E0 shall becalculated based on approximate evaluation of strength index C, the ductility index F, the effective
strength factor α and the story shear modification factor which represent the lateral earthquake force
distribution along the building height as it stated below the equation 1 and 2 for the first screening method,equation 3 and 4 for the second screening method.

n +1(C w + α 1C c ) × Fw
n+in +1
E0 =(C sc + α 2 C w + α 3 C c ) × Fscn+i
E0 =

n +1
E12 + E 22 + E32n+i⎞
n +1⎛⎜ C + ∑ α j C j ⎟ × F1E0 =⎟n + i ⎜⎝j
⎠E0 =

(1)
(2)

(3)
(4)

SEISMIC PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF TURKISH SCHOOL BUILDING
The structure is a reinforced concretebuilding with 3 stories. The total floorarea is about 594m2 and the floor
weight is 7125 kN. The transverse
direction has five spans while thelongitudinal direction has eight spans.
Only longitudinal direction will be
studied since it is weaker than thetransverse one. It has windows with160 cm openings in height at outeraxe, A1-A12 and F1-12, and to study
the short column effect it is assumed
that it has openings of 80 cm in heightat axes C6-C12 and D6-D12. Figure 1
shows the plan view of this school.
The seismic performance of theschool building has been investigatedaccording to both 1st and 2nd screening
Figure 1The plan view, column size and part of elevation oflevels. Only the basic seismic index
Turkish school buildingof the structure (E0) is calculated,
therefore the procedure for the second-class prime elements is ignored, and the irregularity index (SD)and the time index (T) are assumed as 1.0. The unit weight area is assumed as 12 kN/m2 for thebuilding, the compressive strength of concrete is assumed as Fc=17.7 N/mm2, while for steel σy=343
N/mm2. Since the calculated basic seismic index E0 are less than the minimum required seismic index(0.80), the seismic performance have re-evaluated again with 1st screening method after eliminating
short columns by making the seismic slits. Also by using STERA-3D (Structural Earthquake Response
Analysis 3D) software the pushover analysis of the school building is done to confirm the results
obtained from the screening methods.

2SEISMIC RETROFIT OF RC STRUCTURES WITH PRESTRESSED PRECAST CFT AND
FRC BRACES
After the evaluation of the building, an optimal retrofitting must be conducted in a cost effective fashion
to the building to meet the seismic performance demand by improving strength and/or ductility of it. Twotypes of Precast Prestressed Bracing have been developed at Kyoto University for the seismic
strengthening of the buildings. One is concrete filled steel tube (CFT- M18), and the other is Fiber
Reinforced Concrete (FRC-M42). In the case of FRC bracing, gaps between brace ends and frame corners
are filled with high strength non-shrinkage mortar. After hardening of grout mortar, the pre-stressing force
is released. Then the diagonal brace can be jointed to a boundary frame by passive interface compression
due to elongation of the flat spring at the end of the brace. When a frame with bracing is subjected tolateral seismic load, only in one direction the diagonal members work efficiently in compression.
However, in the opposite direction it becomes free because a concrete brace can only work in compression.
This may result that the brace comes off the frame. To avoid this phenomenon, a special device with a flat
spring and steel pipe (FSSP) is installed at the bottom end of diagonal member. This device makes
possible to maintain a certain amount of compressive force in the diagonal member regardless of lateral
response (Watanabe et al. 2004).
Two half-scale specimens (CFT1 and FRC01) were constructed with different brace materials.
The surrounding reinforced concrete portal frames were identical as the sub-assemblage of a four-story
reinforced concrete building, which was designed following the pre-1980 Japanese Building Standard.
The column section was 300 x 300 mm and had sixteen longitudinal D10 deformed bars at the top andbottom. Before applying the horizontal load, prestressing force of 450 kN (0.28f'cbD) and 324 kN(0.20f'cbD) was applied to the beam and each column, respectively, with internal unbonded prestressing
steel bars. The column axial force corresponds to the axial force of the first story column due to thegravity loading. The beam was prestressed to avoid the tension failure. Drift angle controlled reversed
cyclic loading tests were conducted. Lateral displacements were computed by averaging fourmeasurements values (both side of the specimen) at two frame corners. The lateral loads with equalmagnitude were applied at either end of the beam. In this research imposed positive displacements werefive times as large as negative displacements so that the surrounding reinforced concrete portal frame does
not suffer too much damage in the negative loading.
A commercial frame analysis program is used to find out the shear force at the columns, beams
and column-beam joint by introducing the design compression stress of the brace to the frame.
DISCUSSION
Evaluation results of the existing RC school building
After the evaluation, it was found out that the seismic capacities of that building are less than what is
proposed in that standard. The resulted basic seismic index E0 for each story is less than the judgment
index (0.8) of the first screening level as it is shown in Table 1. The second screening level was carriedout for the same building and the resulted basic seismic indices for the first two stories are still less thanthe judgment index (0.6) as it is shown in Table 2. In typical case, the first level method is better to screen
safe buildings. Next a higher-level method can be applied to those buildings that do not pass the lower
level procedure.
The response of the building is also obtained by STERA-3D after applying lateral load with atriangular distribution in the X-direction up to a target drift of 1/50 to compare with the results of thescreenings. Drift-Shear relation and capacity curve can be seen below in Figure 2.

3

Table 1 The results of 1st screening level for Turkish school building before retrofitting and after

Table 2 The results of 2nd screening level for Turkish school building

Drift-Shear Relation

2nd floor
0.2

1st floor
3rd floor

Qi/W

0.15
0.1
0.05
00.00

0.01

0.02

0.03

0.04

0.05

0.06

0.07

Drift (%)

Figure 2 Drift Shear relation of the RC school building
Precast CFT and FRC braces
The lateral load carrying capacity of the reinforced concrete portal frame without the brace was 190kN.
By installing the brace, CFT01 and FRC01 were designed to have 320 kN for CFT and 547 kN for FRC inlateral load capacity at which the brace was to buckle.
The lateral load – total drift ratio relations for the CFT-M18 and FRC-M42 braces are shown in
Figure 4 and Figure 6. Both curves show elastic response, where CFT-M18 shows more ductile behavior
than FRC-M42. A solid line represents the total load and a slightly shaded line represents the sum of shear
forces of two columns. The shear forces of the columns were obtained by subtracting lateral load
contribution of the brace from the total lateral load. Lateral load contribution of the brace was thehorizontal component of the axial force that is computed based on the measured concrete longitudinalstrain.

4

In CFT-M18, the reinforced concrete portal frame had some shear cracks which were not severe
and the specimen failed due to local buckling of the brace when the R=1.40% and the lateral force reached
547 kN. FRC-M42 failed due to buckling of the brace at the mid span when R=0.40% and the lateral force
reached 320 kN and the brace had 5 mm in plane and 2 mm out of plane displacements, at R=0.58% theout of plane and in plane displacements suddenly increased at the center of the bracing and bucklingoccurred. Damage to the other members was restricted to minor flexure cracks. Observed damage of CFTM18 and FRC-M42 is shown in Figure 3 and Figure 5 respectively.

Figure 3 Observed damage of CFT-M18

Figure 4 Lateral Force – Drift relation of CFT-M18

Figure 5 Observed damage of FRC-M42

Figure 6 Lateral Force – Drift relation of FRC-M42

CONCLUSIONS
There are so many vulnerable buildings and houses designed and constructed by old fashioned seismic
engineering in Turkey. The seismic evaluation and retrofit of these buildings are one of the most important,effective and urgent measures for earthquake disaster mitigation.
By following the Japanese standard for the evaluation of existing structures, a RC school buildingin Turkey was analyzed and it was found that the seismic capacity was lower than the required. The
columns were classified according to their strength index and ductility index to find out their contribution
to the seismic capacity of the building by considering each floor. As a result the strength of the building
needs to be improved by an appropriate retrofitting method. This result was also confirmed by a pushover
analyze of the building with Stera-3D program.
Then a new brace system using concrete filled tube and fiber reinforced concrete was tested tofind out its contribution to the strength and ductility of a concrete portal frame and following conclusions
have been drawn. It was experimentally shown that the developed prestressed brace system could easily5retrofit existing reinforced concrete frames with no rebar and bolt anchorage. CFT failed by buckling of
the brace but the lateral load-drift relation was relatively ductile until R=2%, even after the buckling took
place at R=1.40%. CFT may also allow the ductile design procedure due to its enhanced ductility. FRC
failed due to buckling occurring at R=0.58% when the out of plane and in plane displacements suddenly
increased at the center of the bracing. The lateral load capacity of the frame was improved. It is seen thatthe proposed system showed good seismic performance from the strength-resisting mode to the ductility
enhancement mode. In any case, the braced system showed much larger lateral load carrying capacity thanthat of the original frame. The system can be used in Turkey for existing reinforced concrete buildings
susceptible to the earthquake damage as in Japan. As a result houses fragile to earthquake motion caused
most of the devastation having been seen in Japan and Turkey. Sudo et al (1999) mentioned that many
similar problems must be solved and issues must be studied in both countries in order to reduce
earthquake disasters.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Assoc. Prof. Susumu Kono from University of Kyoto andDr. Hasegawa from BRI who sincerely supervised, guided me during this work.

REFERENCES
Buyukozturk, O. et al., 2000, Earthquake Risk Assessment and Hazard Reduction for Structures
Guidelines for seismic retrofit of existing reinforced concrete buildings, 2001, The Japan Building
Disaster Prevention Association, Japan
Gulkan P. et al., 2000, Earthquake Reconnaissance Report, supplement to vol. 16 Earthquake Spectra.
Watanabe, F., et al., 2004, The 13th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Vancouver, CanadaSudo, et al., Journal of Natural Disaster Science, Volum21, Number 2, 65-856