Seismic vulnerability assessment of low-rise irregular reinforced concrete structures using cumulative damage index

Evaluating seismic performance of urban structures for future earthquakes is one of the key prerequisites of rehabilitation programs. Irregular structures, as a specific case, are more susceptible to sustain earthquake damage than regular structures. The study here is to identify damage states of vertically irregular structures using the well-recognized Park-Ang damage index. For doing this, a regular 3-story reinforced concrete (RC) structure is first designed based on ACI-318 code, and a peak ground acceleration (PGA) of 0.3 g. Some known vertical irregularities such as setback, short column and soft story are then applied to the regular structure. All the four structures are subjected to seven different earthquakes accelerations and different amplitudes which are then analyzed using nonlinear dynamic procedure. The damage indices of the structures are then accounted for using the pointed out damage index. The results show that the structure with soft story irregularity sustains more damage in all the earthquake records than the other structures. The least damage belongs the regular structure showing that different earthquake with different accelerations and amplitudes have no significant effect on the regular structures.