Fragility curves of gravity-load designed RC buildings with regularity in plan

In this paper Fragility Curves (FCs) relevant to existing RC framed building types representative of the Italian building population designed only to vertical load and regular in-plan have been derived from an extensive campaign of non-linear dynamic analyses. In the generation of the FCs, damage states according to the EMS98 scale have been considered while the intensity measure has been defined by adopting an integral parameter, such as the Housner intensity. FCs have been generated by varying different parameters, including building age, number of storeys, presence and position of infill panels, plan dimensions, external beams stiffness and concrete strength. In order to verify the effectiveness of the damage prediction, comparisons were made between the results obtained from the proposed FCs with those deriving from both prominent fragility studies available in the technical literature and damage distributions observed in past earthquakes. Results show that damage grades obtained by adopting the proposed FCs are generally lower than those provided by the other approaches considered. A comparison with real damage data, shows that the proposed FCs generally estimate more severe damage distributions than those observed in past earthquakes, although they give lower differences with respect to the other approaches.