Seismic Performance of Gedikbulak School Building Revisited

After the Van Earthquakes of October 23 and November 9, 2011 a large number of buildings were damaged. A team of experts from the Istanbul Technical University, the Earthquake Engineering and Disaster Management Center investigated numerous buildings including schools to determine their damage levels and to decide whether they can be used further for education purposes. One of the most remarkable field inspections was observation of the damages in the Gedikbulak School building which has been the only school building even the only public building experiencing total damage. The site observations and collected information reveal that the building had several shear walls located in two directions besides columns and beams. The building had been constructed by adopting one of the sample projects of the Ministry of Education. However, site observations have shown that the concrete quality and workmanship used in the building were quite poor. In this paper, the damage records of the building obtained from the field observations are given and the structural system is modeled and analyzed by adopting the structural layout obtained from the archives of the Ministry of Education. The study is carried out by using the linear and nonlinear analysis by employing plastic hinge assumption in the columns and fiber assumption in the shear walls. Seismic performance assessment of Gedikbulak school building is studied in view of the design shortcomings and the maximum earthquake effects. Numerical results are compared to field observations. Finally, design recommendations and seismic evaluation of school buildings are presented.