Building fitment versus building safety

In view of the hidden perils concerning building safety in the design, material selection, and construction during current building fitment, the authors have analyzed the influence of main-body safety, fitment components safety, the connection between fitment component and main body, and structural safety upon building safety during building fitment. Environmental safety relating to fitment construction, and choice and use of fitment materials should be taken into consideration during building fitment. The authors have proposed a series of measures to solve the impact of building fitment upon building safety.

Design and development of safety evaluation system of buildings on a seismic field based on the network platform

This paper describes a set of on-site earthquake safety evaluation systems for buildings, which were developed based on a network platform. The system embedded into the quantitative research results which were completed in accordance with the provisions from Post-earthquake Field Works, Part 2： Safety Assessment of Buildings, GB18208.2 -2001, and was further developed into an easy-to-use software platform. The system is aimed at allowing engineering professionals, civil engineeing technicists or earthquake-affected victims on site to assess damaged buildings through a network after earthquakes. The authors studied the function structure, process design of the safety evaluation module, and hierarchical analysis algorithm module of the system in depth, and developed the general architecture design, development technology and database design of the system. Technologies such as hierarchical architecture design and Java EE were used in the system development, and MySQL5 was adopted in the database development. The result is a complete evaluation process of information collection, safety evaluation, and output of damage and safety degrees, as well as query and statistical analysis of identified buildings. The system can play a positive role in sharing expert post-earthquake experience and promoting safety evaluation of buildings on a seismic field.

Estimation of the behavior factor of existing RC-MRF buildings

In recent years, several research groups have studied a new generation of analysis methods for seismic response assessment of existing buildings. Nevertheless, many important developments are still needed in order to define more reliable and effective assessment procedures. Moreover, regarding existing buildings, it should be highlighted that due to the low knowledge level, the linear elastic analysis is the only analysis method allowed. The same codes（such as NTC2008, EC8） consider the linear dynamic analysis with behavior factor as the reference method for the evaluation of seismic demand. This type of analysis is based on a linear-elastic structural model subject to a design spectrum, obtained by reducing the elastic spectrum through a behavior factor. The behavior factor（reduction factor or q factor in some codes） is used to reduce the elastic spectrum ordinate or the forces obtained from a linear analysis in order to take into account the non-linear structural capacities. The behavior factors should be defined based on several parameters that influence the seismic nonlinear capacity, such as mechanical materials characteristics, structural system, irregularity and design procedures. In practical applications, there is still an evident lack of detailed rules and accurate behavior factor values adequate for existing buildings. In this work, some investigations of the seismic capacity of the main existing RC-MRF building types have been carried out. In order to make a correct evaluation of the seismic force demand, actual behavior factor values coherent with force based seismic safety assessment procedure have been proposed and compared with the values reported in the Italian seismic code, NTC08.

Modeling the collapse of the Plasco Building.Part I:Reconstruction of fire

In recent years,fires in tall buildings have become more frequent,which costs billions of dollars each year and the loss of many human lives.The facade fire in the Grenfell tower made the structure uninhabitable,and the collapse of the three World Trade Center(WTC)towers is the total structural failure caused by fire.Despite such events,no well-defined methodology exists to reconstruct both fire and structural behaviors and carrys out the forensic investigation of a building fire.This Part I paper collects the evidence of the Plasco Building fire and generates a coherent timeline to reconstruct the fire processes.The vertical and horizontal fire spread of the building is reconstructed using computational fluid dynamics(CFD)fire modeling and calibrated against the evidence library.The spatio-temporal temperature history from the fire modeling provides realistic fire scenarios to simulate the structural response.The fire simulation results are used as boundary conditions to be transferred to a finite element analysis tool for a detailed structural analysis to determine the likely collapse mechanism of the Plasco Building in Part II.The methodology presented in this paper to reconstruct the fire can also guide the structural fire safety engineers to improve the building fire-safety and life-safety strategies.