RUI/Collaborative Research: Framework for Earthquake-Resilient Design of Tall Buildings

Csu Fullerton Auxiliary Services Corporation, Fullerton CA

Investigators

Abstract

Urban areas are experiencing significant increase in construction of tall buildings to meet the demands of their rapidly increasing population. It is projected that 70 percent of the world's population will live in urban areas by 2050. The resiliency of tall buildings during and after a natural hazard event plays a vital role in maintaining economic and social stability of an urban region. In the case of earthquake hazard, current design methodologies for tall buildings focus only on preventing loss of human lives and building collapse, whereas damage-impaired losses are not being considered nor limited through the design. Recent earthquakes in Chile, Japan, and New Zealand highlighted that due to the great number of building occupants, seismic impacts would not be constrained within tall building footprints, but would also affect the community as a whole. To alleviate such earthquake consequences, this research will investigate an integrated system-level framework and metrics essential for understanding and modeling the earthquake-resilient design of tall buildings (e.g., repair losses, downtime, resiliency index, and expected annual loss). The research will focus on the development, validation, and integration of novel simulation tools and loss/recovery models that will envelope interaction between soil, foundation, structural, and nonstructural building components to provide a methodology for identifying engineering design requirements that will enable resiliency. Given the diverse student body of the participating universities, this project will enhance student experiences, particularly those of underrepresented groups, by active participation in a multi-campus interdisciplinary research project and collaborations with researchers and engineers in the U.S and globally. This research will focus on tall buildings that utilize reinforced concrete core walls as the lateral load-resisting system, as it is currently the preferred system in construction of tall buildings. To develop the system-level framework, the research program will target four major areas that are essential to addressing the critical gaps in current simulation, assessment, and damage/loss/recovery estimation capabilities: 1) development and validation of a novel, three-dimensional, analytical model for reinforced concrete structural walls that integrates shear-flexural interaction and failure mechanisms, 2) evaluation of available soil models for simulating soil behavior and soil-foundation-structure interaction effects of tall buildings, 3) development of functionality limit states, downtime, and recovery models for tall buildings, and 4) integration of all framework components into a robust innovative tool for resilient-based design. The framework components will be validated based on test data available in the literature and archived in the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure data repository or in other data bases, and on data collected through earthquake reconnaissance reports and interviews with engineers, public officials, contractors, owners, and insurers. The framework will be demonstrated on a tall reinforced concrete core wall building located in an urban region with high seismicity. The framework will be applicable to all types of lateral-load resisting systems for tall buildings, including new and existing construction. The developed framework components will tackle the aforementioned critical gaps and provide valuable data sets to advance the natural hazard mitigation of civil infrastructure. This project will contribute to research and engineering communities by implementing the framework components into widely available computational platforms, disseminating research results using web-based tools, involving professionals and researchers in earthquake engineering during the project, and disseminating educational materials.