Performance and Protection of Pre-Engineered Buildings Subjected to Blast and Earthquake Excitations

Technological advancements and improvements with time have significantly contributed to improve the living standards with new kind of products and utilities. An example of such technological improvement in structural engineering is Pre-Engineered Building (PEB). This concept includes pre-designing and pre-fabrication processes. A Pre-Engineered Building (PEB) refers to a building which is pre-designed at a factory using some simulation and modelling software as per the specifications, codes and the loads that will be acting on the structure before production of the building components and then finally assembled at site thereby reducing the completion time. In the current study, a case study of an existing PEB structure subjected to wind analysis has been investigated. The main objective of the present study is to evaluate the retrofitting ability of passive control dampers in the event of an earthquake or blast phenomenon. The study shows the effectiveness of vibration control techniques in the form of passive dampers in improving the performance of PEB structure subjected to blast and earthquake using fluid viscous dampers. The study also discusses the impact of different damper placements and properties on the structural performance of PEB structure subjected to blast and earthquake. Primarily three damper placement techniques are incorporated in the present study namely single diagonal, V-shaped damper and inverted V-shaped damper. The structural performance of PEB structure has been studied using finite element tool considering the non-linear analysis and comparing the structural responses for with and without damper conditions. The V-shaped and inverted V-shaped damper placement technique is the most effective approach in resisting the damaging effects against blasts and earthquakes for the selected PEB structure in comparison to the conventional diagonal braced dampers.