NUMERICAL ANALYSIS ON SEISMIC PERFORMANCE OF RC FRAME UNDER DIFFERENT STRENGTHENING SCHEMES

With developing of aging problems, altering of service functions, enhancing of seismic fortifications and affecting of catastrophic actions, plenty of existing buildings have to be strengthened at present or in measurable future. How to achieve an excellent strengthening scheme which is feasible in technique, reasonable in economy and convenient in construction, is a chief problem to be considered for the designers or technicians and a key factor to obtain desired effects in the field of strengthening and retrofitting to strengthen existing buildings. It's very important to appraise the suitability of a strengthening scheme based on whole performance of the strengthened building structures or systems, which is also the way to ensure a scheme can be passed the test of engineering practice. In this study, a RC frame with insufficient flexural capacities has been simulated under three strengthening schemes, namely, affixing carbon fabric, bonding steel plates and increasing member sections, by a fiber model program developed and validated with test data in previous researches. And some initial discussions and simple conclusions, which would provide some reference for optimizing schemes in the field of strengthening and retrofitting, have been drawn on the seismic performance of the RC frame under various strengthening schemes.