Seismic performance of a block of buildings representative of the typical construction in the Eixample district in Barcelona (Spain)

Abstract

Between the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, Barcelona was expanded, occupying the terrains connecting the old walled city and the nearby towns of the plateau of Barcelona. At that time, a large number of unreinforced masonry buildings were constructed and nowadays many of them are still used as dwellings. Though built individually, these buildings are connected to adjacent buildings, forming blocks composed of aggregates. In order to analyze the seismic behavior of isolated buildings and aggregates, two typical central buildings and one typical corner building have been chosen. The two central buildings and the corner building are referred as C1, C2, and E buildings. Two corner buildings and two central buildings have been connected in order to simulate a block side. This aggregate is referred as AGG and it is composed by the following sequence of individual buildings: E-C1-C2-E. Original plans and drawings of existing buildings are then used to model these buildings. The modeled buildings have five stories. Standard pushover analyses lead to evaluate their seismic performance by means of capacity spectra and fragility curves. The analysis has been carried out in the parallel (Ux) and transversal (Uy) directions to the street. Then, a capacity spectrum based method is used to analyze the seismic behavior of these buildings considered as individual buildings and as an aggregate. Two earthquake scenarios are considered. The first one is a deterministic scenario which is based on a historical earthquake occurred in 1824, 25 km away from the city and the second one is a probabilistic scenario, which represents the ground motion with a probability of occurrence of 10% in 50 years. The soil local effects have been also considered and both scenarios have been used to assess the expected damage. Four non-null damage states are considered: slight (1), moderate (2), severe (3) and extensive-to-collapse (4). For the type of soil where most of the buildings are, and in the Ux direction, the four buildings show a similar behavior. The mean damage grade is 2.3 for the deterministic scenario and 2.7 for the probabilistic one. This means that moderate to severe damage is expected in both cases; furthermore, in the case of the deterministic scenario more than 10% of the buildings would suffer extensive-to-collapse damage and nearly 20% for the probabilistic scenario, confirming the high vulnerability of such buildings. The differences in the expected damage are due to the significant different characteristics of the response spectra of the earthquake scenarios in the range of the fundamental periods of the buildings.