Incorporation of post-earthquake fire (PEF) and subsequent aftershock for performance analysis of steel buildings

The advancements in analysis and design approaches considering the seismic loads have helped safeguard buildings against structural failure and collapse. However, design objectives should also consider the associated effects and performance evaluation incorporating the sequential effects. Improving the performance of buildings at both the asset and community levels is now of major interest in the field of structural engineering. This research addresses the advancement toward this goal by incorporating post-earthquake fire and aftershock to multi-hazard design methodology. A set of mid-rise buildings - 3-, 9-, and 20-story moment resisting steel frames, characteristic of those found in rapidly growing metropolitan areas of US, are selected for the study considering the relative vulnerability to post-earthquake fire. The analyses of the responses are based on advanced finite element simulation methods/techniques and corresponding approaches. ABAQUS/CAE is primarily employed for the simulation and analysis. The effects of fire are thoroughly studied from the literature and considered explicitly, and the analysis is performed for a complete cycle of main shock (full-intensity) -fire- aftershock (reduced intensity) earthquake. The research commences with the investigation of the effects of modeling approach- using beam element and using solid element with slab, on Post Earthquake Fire (PEF) study of a single room model. At the end of a complete sequence, the model developed using 3D solid elements are found to underestimate the stiffness loss by around 15% compared to those developed using 2D beam elements. The behaviors of selected steel moment resisting frame buildings then simulated with PEF are investigated to quantify the overall performance behavior of the building system. Inter-story Drift Ratio (IDR) and Stiffness Degradation over the complete sequence of events are chosen as the damage measures. The same approach is applied to a real building in California and the performance behavior is studied. All the building systems studied show the significant damages and change in behavior after incorporating the fire and aftershock. In all building sets, the stiffness loss (global) due to mainshock alone (2% to 10% in the cases studied) is very less as compared to the stiffness loss due to fire alone (6% to 15%) and aftershock (10% to 25%) alone.