Seismic Capacity Assessment of Compulsory School Buildings in Taiwan - Simplified Pushover Analysis

Engineering sense and learning from past earthquakes are more important than any amounts of computation and analysis. This study reports seismic assessment of 100 school buildings model in Taiwan with the real columns detailing from Tainan and Nantou databank. According to the post-earthquake reconnaissance of the 921 Chi-Chi Earthquake, a simplified nonlinear static pushover analysis was proposed to evaluate low-rise shear building which the capacity of an existing building is estimated by superposing the load-displacement response of vertical members in the damage story. The corresponding collapse peak ground motion was obtained by using Capacity spectrum Analysis referred to ATC-40. The seismic assessments are observed with current seismic code requirements and also compared to the real buildings PGA databank. Seismic capacity assessments indicate that those school buildings may not well-engineered design. The behaviors of investigated school building columns are mainly dominated by flexural failure or flexural shear failure.