Seismic performance evaluation of existing RC buildings designed as per past codes of practice

Assessing the capacity of existing building as per the present codes of practice is an important task in performance-based evaluation. In order to enhance the performance of existing buildings to the present level of ductile design prescribed by present codes and find the retrofit or design a rehabilitation system, there is an urgent need to assess accurately the actual lateral load resistance and the potential failure modes. In this paper, a typical 6-storey reinforced concrete (RC) building frame is designed for four design cases as per the provisions in three revisions of IS: 1893 and IS: 456 and it is analysed using user-defined (UD) nonlinear hinge properties or default-hinge (DF) properties, given in SAP 2000 based on the FEMA-356 and ATC-40 guidelines. An analytical procedure is developed to evaluate the yield, plastic and ultimate rotation capacities of RC elements of the framed buildings and these details are used to define user-defined inelastic effect of hinge for columns as P-M-M and for beams as M3 curves. A simplified three parameter model is used to find the stress–strain curves of RC elements beyond the post yield region of confined concrete. Building performance of structural components in terms of target building performance levels are studied with the nonlinear static analysis. The possible differences in the results of pushover analysis due to default- and user-defined nonlinear component properties at different performance levels of the building are studied.