Identification of the structural model and analysis of the global seismic behaviour of a RC damaged building

Abstract The study of the structural behaviour of damaged RC buildings during ground motion is a fundamental topic in the modern earthquake engineering. Many studies have been carried out in order to better understand the real evolution of the damage in RC buildings during a seismic event. In this work, a damaged RC building has been intensively investigated in terms of materials property and stiffness evolution in order to interpreting the structural and nonstructural surveyed damage. The peculiarity of this building is its damage sequence during the 2002 Molise earthquake. In fact, the town of Bonefro suffered moderate damage (MCS intensity VII), with the exception of the investigated reinforced concrete building. The October 31, 2002 event (M=5.4) caused some structural damage to this building. The second event (M=5.3), on November 1, 2002, increased substantially the damage level (grade 4 according to the 1998 European Macroseismic Scale). It occurred just while, due to fortuitous circumstances, a 5 min. seismic velocimetric recording was being taken. The working group has performed some frequency analyses based on the recording. Several non linear models have been defined to understand the damage evolution of the building and the local and global damage patterns through for static analyses. Finally, linear and non linear models have been developed with the main goal of identifying the characteristics of a reliable undamaged structural model.