Seismic vulnerability assessment of RC buildings according to the 2007 and 2018 Turkish seismic codes

Fragility curves are useful tools to estimate the damage probability of buildings owing to seismic actions. The purpose of this study is to investigate seismic vulnerability of reinforced concrete (RC) buildings, according to the 2007 and 2018 Turkish Seismic Codes, using fragility curves. For the numerical analyses, typical five-and seven-storey RC buildings were selected and incremental dynamic analyses (IDA) were performed. To complete the IDAs, eleven earthquake acceleration records multiplied by various scaling factors from 0.2g to 0.8g were used. To predict nonlinearity, a distributed hinge model that involves material and geometric nonlinearity of the structural members was used. Damages to confined concrete and reinforcement bar of structural members were obtained by considering the unit deformation demands of the 2007 Turkish Seismic Code (TSC-2007) and the 2018 Turkey Building Earthquake Code (TBEC-2018). Vulnerability evaluation of these buildings was performed using fragility curves based on the results of incremental dynamic analyses. Fragility curves were generated in terms of damage levels occurring in confined concrete and reinforcement bar of structural members with a lognormal distribution assumption. The fragility curves show that the probability of damage occurring is more according to TBEC-2018 than according to TSC-2007 for selected buildings.