Abstract:
In the present study seismic response and vulnerability of hill-side RC buildings, often observed in the Indian
Himalayan region as well as in some other parts of the world were analytically investigated using non-linear
dynamic analyses. The conducted analyses led to the development of seismic fragility functions based on three
different ground-motion intensity measures, viz. peak ground acceleration, spectral acceleration at the fundamental building period, and average spectral accelerations over a range of periods. In addition to the different
code design levels that are considered in the assessment, the choice of the ground-motion intensity measure as
well as the structural configuration type of these hill-side buildings show quite significant effects on the resulted
damage probabilities of different damage states, and thus on the computed mean damage ratio. The peak ground
acceleration results in a significant overestimation of the mean damage ratio for the maximum considered
earthquake hazard level when compared with the spectral acceleration-based intensity measures. On the other
hand, the irregular structural configuration of hill-side buildings alone results in a significantly higher mean
damage ratio when compared with regular structural configuration. In addition to the design code level, the need
to incorporate both of these effects, i.e. the choice of ground-motion intensity measure and irregular structural
configurations of hill-side buildings, in the next generation of earthquake loss estimation studies and software
tools is underlined.
