Minimum wall-area index for low-rise concrete housing

Medium- and low-rise buildings with different construction systems have exhibited low seismic-resistant performance during recent earthquakes primarily because of low wall-area index. The increasing demand for low-income housing in Latin America, particularly in Colombia, has fostered the construction of buildings with reinforced concrete walls using industrialized construction systems. This study proposes two equations for calculating wall-area index for low-rise concrete housing in terms of the height of the house, soil-structure interaction, seismic hazard zone and allowable drift. Seismic-resistant structural analyses were performed on nine housing prototypes considering six study variables: modeling method, seismic hazard zone, support type of walls, concrete cracking, seismic analysis method, diaphragm type, mass distribution and energy dissipation coefficient. Results derived using the proposed equations are compared with wall-area index computed using equations proposed by building codes.