Finite Element Model Calibration of a Reinforcement Concrete Building from laboratory tests for seismic retrofitting interventions

The passive control systems are the protection techniques most used in the construction and retrofit of buildings worldwide due to their intrinsic simplicity, economic advantages, and the extensive literature review produced through different researchers since the '70s of the 20th century. These strategies have been compared recently in many papers based on finite element methods (FEM). However, many do not replicate the authentic and unique building behavior under dynamic and static demand, letting uncertainties about the benefits and the disadvantages in the implementation. The present study evaluates the effects of the dissipation devices as the seismic protection system for retrofitting interventions on a four-story reinforcement concrete building subjected in 1994 to an experimental campaign to study the dynamic behavior of the structure under different seismic actions. The starting point is the reproduction of the experimental results on a finite element model through the geometrical configurations, the definition of strain-stress material models, localization and type of hinges on the structure, and setting of loads and masses. Finally, the calibration validates the retrofit interventions' performance and the design methodologies applied, minimizing the uncertainties and defining the real benefits and drawbacks in applying the control systems. The fluid viscous dampers and the metallic yielding dampers are the strategies selected to be utilized in this paper. They have been designed to improve the seismic performance of the building under a specific seismic demand according to the Eurocode and the current Italian Standard for Constructions. The process includes the modal analysis and non-linear static analyses to extract all the information required by the design methodologies employed. Additionally, the non-linear time history analyses are applied using different accelerograms carefully selected by previous researchers to validate the results. Finally, the inter-story drifts, the internal forces of the structural elements, and the vulnerability indexes are computed for the reinforcement concrete building with and without retrofit interventions to evaluate the seismic behavior improvement of the structure thanks to the passive control systems. Besides, the structural features mentioned before lets to compare the protection techniques to define the best performance between retrofitting interventions with dissipative devices.