González-Avellanet, Yvonne

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    Rehabilitation of RC residential houses on gravity columns over slope terrain
    (2015) González-Avellanet, Yvonne; Martínez-Cruzado, José A.; College of Engineering; Guevara, José O.; López Rodríguez, Ricardo R.; Suárez Colche, Luis E.; Department of Civil Engineering; Vanacore, Elizabeth
    It is well known that Puerto Rico is exposed to the risk of experiencing strong earthquakes, since it is located in an earthquake prone region. It is a fact that in Puerto Rico there are many houses that are built over hilly terrain, and combined with poor construction practice, these types of houses are at a high seismic risk. Residences built over slope terrain are different from those in plains, i.e., they are very irregular and unsymmetrical in both horizontal and vertical structural planes. Due to site conditions, residences on hill slope are characterized by unequal column heights within a story, which results in variation in stiffness of columns of the same story. Furthermore, typically these residences have a retaining wall constructed on one side of the residence to support the slopes of earth masses on the higher side of the slope (uphill). These walls are often constructed of masonry block walls or reinforced concrete. The presence of this retaining wall induces an unsymmetrical distribution of mass and rigidity in the residences, since the wall is located only at one side of the house. Because of the imminent risk of being affected by a strong earthquake, it is important to study the behavior and performance of these structures. Although these structures have been studied in the past, it is important to consider the particular feature of the differences in column elevations, torsional effects and propose rehabilitation techniques for the hilly terrain conditions. These structures need a rehabilitation system that fit the needs of the owners and meet the construction practice in the Island. The analytical models proposed are three-dimensional idealized models, based on the characteristic of these types of residences from a field survey. The objectives of this research are to determine the collapse mechanism of the three-dimensional models using a static nonlinear pushover analysis and nonlinear time history analysis and propose rehabilitation strategies for improving seismic the behavior of these structures. The global performance of the models was established based on the performance point obtained through the Capacity Spectrum Method (ATC 40). At the performance point global and local behavior of the frame elements were evaluated based on their damage limit state. The plastic hinge pattern of the models was studied to determine the collapse mechanism of these residences. After performing the analysis, the results showed that these residences cannot withstand the seismic demand imposed by the Uniform Building Code 1997 for Seismic Zone 3 and Soil Type Sd. The RC shear wall rehabilitation strategy was proven to be effective in increasing the capacity of the models.