Performance Evaluation of Seismic Reinforced Column of Buildings

It have been increasing societal and economic demands on seismic design and retrofit because of recently frequent occurrence of earthquake in Korea. Structural collapse due to the earthquake results from the failure of columns and hence the columns have to be reinforced to improve the seismic performance of the structures. In this study, new seismic retrofit method for columns of buildings was proposed so that the bottom part and the base of the columns could be reinforced with steel plates and fire-proof rubber pads. Statical loading tests were performed with the columns to evaluate the seismic performance of the proposed retrofit method. The failure mode and the strain variation of the reinforced column were analyzed according to the static loading and the results were compared to those from the unreinforced column. As a result, the seismic performance of the reinforced column was significantly improved.