Seismic rehabilitation of buildings by reinforced concrete rocking wall-frame system

The aim of this paper is to introduce a new earthquake resistant rocking-wall moment frame (RWMF) that is capable of damage reduction, collapse prevention, self-centering, reparability and performance control due to the strong ground motion. The function of the wall is to prevent soft-story failure, enforce uniform drift, and provide suitable supports for energy-dissipating devices. The system consists of a grade beam restrained moment frame (GBRMF), post-tensioned (PT) rigid rocking core (RRC) gap opening link beams (GOLBs) and buckling restrained braces (BRBs). Although all results of manual linear analysis have been verified by independent computer analysis they not been confirmed by nonlinear numerical modeling or experimental data. The paper provides a comparison between Time History Analysis and long hand solutions.Then it investigates the applications of the proposed technologies for seismic rehabilitation of substandard buildings.

Keywords:

Rocking-wall moment frame , collapse prevention , self-centering , performance control , uniform drift , rehabilitation