Building capacity curve estimation for damage evaluation using Japanese Seismic Evaluation results

Following an earthquake, rapid inspections to evaluate building damage are crucial to allow the affected region\nto initiate a quicker return to a functioning society. To achieve this, structural health monitoring is increasingly\nbeing used in practice. However, there are difficulties in installing sensors in all buildings due to various\nlimitations. One potential approach to address this issue in Japan is to use results from Japanese Seismic\nEvaluation. Within this evaluation process, the story shear force and interstory drift capacity are estimated\nfrom the section dimensions and bar arrangement of the vertical members for each floor and direction.\nBuildings built prior to 1981, when the seismic codes were drastically changed, are more susceptible to\ndamage and are required by law to undergo the evaluation process. Thus, if results from such methods could\nbe used to estimate a capacity curve, which can then be paired with available ground acceleration data, a\nrapid assessment of potential building damage could be obtained.\nIn this study, a method to derive a building’s capacity curve from the Japanese Seismic Evaluation results (i.e.,\nstrength versus drift relationship) is proposed assuming a linear force distribution across the floors. Moreover,\nthe study investigates the comparison of the Seismic Evaluation and pushover analysis, using experimental\nresults from a 6-story reinforced concrete building that displayed inelastic behavior and soft-story mechanism.\nThe predicted capacity curve indicate that the proposed method generally aligns with the responses from the\nexperiment, with smaller responses in the representative acceleration. The Capacity Spectrum Method was\nthen performed using the capacity curve to obtain the damage state, and the proposed method had the same\nor larger damage states compared to the experimental results. These conclusions indicate that the outputs\nfrom the Japanese Seismic Evaluation could be valuable for estimating building responses in a conservative\nmanner.