Marrero-Irizarry, Ariel A.

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    Structural design of a reinforced concrete tsunami-resistant building for vertical evacuation structure in Bo. Espinal- Aguada, Puerto Rico
    (2015) Marrero-Irizarry, Ariel A.; Martínez Cruzado, José A.; College of Engineering; Suárez, Luis E.; Canals Silander, Miguel F.; Department of Civil Engineering; Mercado Irizarry, Aurelio
    After the disasters caused by the Ocean Indian Tsunami (2004) and Tohoku Tsunami (2011), the society is much more aware of the necessity to have available vertical evacuation structures from tsunami. This situation has highlighted the need to incorporate the tsunami-resistant design in the building codes. For this reason, federal agencies and the academic sector have joined efforts to produce design guidelines such as FEMA P-646, to eventually incorporate them in future building codes. This study focused on the design of a reinforced concrete tsunami-resistant building to serve as a vertical evacuation structure for Bo. Espinal-Aguada, PR using the guidelines of FEMA P-646. Particular site data including, demographic information, tsunami risk evaluations, tsunami design hydrodynamic parameters, and FEMA P-646 tsunami load calculation provisions were required to perform the vertical evacuation structure design in this research work. The vertical evacuation structure was designed to provide refuge area for little more than 85% of the residents. In addition, attributes of tsunami-resistant structures defined by FEMA P-646 were adopted. Since the computed tsunami hydrodynamic parameters were relative low for this particular area, the design was governed by the earthquake load combinations in many of the structural members. However, slab system were designed against the uplift effects from tsunami for the first two stories. Moreover, building displacement and inter-story drift curves were developed to compare the structure behavior due to tsunami and earthquake loads separately, where seismic loads resulted in higher displacements and higher drift values for this particular case. Suggested ideas to protect deep foundations from scouring were presented and a rough cost estimate of the vertical evacuation structure was performed. The present work could be considered as a methodology for the design of vertical evacuation structures in high risk coastal communities around the island of Puerto Rico.