Collapse probability of soft-storey building in Australia and implications for risk-based seismic design

Collapse prevention is the primary objective of earthquake-resistant design of structures; hence, the probability of collapse should be taken as a crucial performance indicator for risk-based design of new structures or assessment of existing structures. One major challenge in collapse risk assessment is to reliably model the non-linear structural response behaviour. This study features the rocking response behaviour of precast reinforced concrete (RC) columns based on results from previous field testing on parts of a real building and supplemented with a study of their rocking behaviours through a series of shake-table tests. The effects of bidirectional earthquake actions on failure drift capacity of columns have also been incorporated, such that realistic estimates of displacement capacity were made for constructing collapse fragility functions, which were then combined with the ground motion recurrence relationships of Melbourne, Australia for the computation of collapse probability. A suite of typical soft-storey buildings was adopted, with considerations given to a diversity of site conditions. Deaggregation of the results reveals the range of return periods that controls the collapse risk, which could have important implications for the choice of earthquake scenarios for seismic analysis and design in regions of lower seismicity.