Abstract
A seismic evaluation method for existing reinforced concrete buildings retrofitted by energy absorbing devices such as braces and stud columns with a damper is proposed in this paper. The proposed method is a static procedure to calculate the seismic index, I_S, for the buildings, which is an index to judge whether existing buildings and those retrofitted by conventional repair techniques are safe for the assumed earthquake load in the Building Standard Law of Japan. For three one-bay-one-story reinforced concrete frames with an energy absorbing device for which shaking table tests have been conducted, the I_S values calculated by the proposed method is compared with those assumed from the test results in order to examine the validity.
