The Necessity of Seismic Retrofitting of Buildings and Brief Review of Different Methods

As most of countries over the world are on earthquake belt, most these countries are vulnerable to earthquake. Destructive earthquakes destroy residential structures and lead to many life and financial damages. Unfortunately, due to some reasons as executive weaknesses, lack of exact design, not observing engineering codes, weakness of supervision in construction process, some semi-resistant or low-resistant buildings to earthquake. Based on theseitems, considering stability of buildings against earthquake and retrofitting and seismic improvement of existing structures is a necessary. Identification of structures in need of retrofitting and improvement and presenting suitable methods are of great importance in terms of time, economic and executive. By library study method, at first some definitions of seismic retrofitting are presented and then necessary of retrofitting and improvement of buildings is investigated. Finally, different methods are presented briefly.

Keywords:

Retrofitting , Improvement , Seismic force , Stability of structures