Ultimate Time of Brittle Reinforced Concrete Buildings

Abstract

Existing reinforced concrete (RC) buildings with brittle columns may be hazardous in the event of an earthquake. To effectively plan building evacuations, it is important to determine how much time takes for such buildings to heavy damage. Thus, we conducted a dynamic analysis using test results to examine the ultimate time of RC buildings that were designed according to old Japanese codes. The ultimate time was defined as the time between the appearance of cracks and ultimate drift. The ultimate drift was a lateral drift when the lateral load decreased to 80% of the maximum strength.