Evaluation of Earthquake Performance of Reinforced Concrete Buildings with Fuzzy Logic Method

Abstract

A reinforced concrete building is a type of building whose structural system consists of reinforced concrete columns, beams, shear walls, slabs, and foundations. It has been observed that reinforced concrete buildings have been severely damaged or collapsed even in moderate shaking. Evaluating buildings after earthquakes and their performances are quite important for the safety of life and property. In the literature, different methods have been developed for pre-earthquake evaluation of buildings, either low-cost and rapid or slow and high-cost and tool-demanding. In this study, in order to overcome the gap in the literature, the evaluation of the earthquake performance of buildings with the fuzzy logic method is discussed. In this context, the buildings' performance was evaluated by considering the concrete compressive strength, number of stories, ground floor area, area of column and shear walls, and architectural parameters. The data of 18, 28, and 146 buildings affected by the earthquakes in Afyon, Bingöl, and Van provinces in 2002, 2003, and 2011, respectively, were used in the study. Out of the 192 building data, 94 buildings were processed as data, and fuzzy logic rules available in Matlab were applied. The remaining 98 buildings were tested with this method. The buildings considered are light, moderate, and severely damaged or collapsed. The proposed method can be classified as rapid tier two (or level two) evaluation. According to the results, an 88% success rate was achieved which indicates the importance of the fuzzy logic method that can be utilized in determining the seismic performance of reinforced concrete buildings.