Seismic Vulnerability Assessment of Reinforced Concrete Buildings Having Nonlinear Fluid Viscous Dampers

Abstract Seismic resilience is the residual capacity of a damaged system for recovering and sustaining an acceptable level of performance as a consequence of a seismic event. Firstly, this paper summarizes the current calculation framework of seismic resilience using fragility analyses. After that, a new metric based on vulnerability analyses is developed to calculate seismic resilience. Finally, a typical hospital building is adopted as a single building and then retrofitted with supplemental Energy Dissipation Systems (EDS) to show the applicability of the new metric and compare it with the current calculation model of the seismic resilience. The considered supplemental EDS is the Nonlinear Fluid Viscous Damper (NFVD) located as the diagonal damper-brace system. The seismic performance of the supplemental EDSs is to enhance structural performance by reducing induced lateral displacements and as a result the level of physical damages and losses. To this end, Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA) is implemented to achieve the damage fragility and vulnerability curves. A comparison of the fragility, vulnerability, and functionality curves indicates that NFVDs are potentially useful for attenuating seismic damages to structural and non-structural components.