Evaluation Of Seismic Performance Of Existing Building Structures By Pushover Method

A lot of earthquake damages at home and abroad have showed the vulnerability of existing building structures, which fully proved the importance of evaluating the earthquake resisting behavior of existing building structures. In this paper, the theoretical evaluation method of structural earthquake resisting behavior, pushover analysis method, was expounded. And some valuable conclusion for application of pushover analysis method had been gained.In the beginning, some important factors influencing on the result of pushover analysis method, such as earthquake requirement spectrum, structural capability spectrum, horizontal force distribution, application reliability, high-model problem, etc, were discussed. Then the influence of different characteristic of structure and earthquake on pushover evaluating result was analyzed. It was demonstrated that different structural and earthquake characteristic had different influence on the results of pushover analysis method. In the final, the pushover analysis method was applied into two typical existing structures. The analysis result indicated that the features of different structures would be considered in application of the pushover analysis method.From this paper's study, it had been identified that the pushover analysis method was reliable in scope below: (a) low-middle rise, regular, the first model deformable structures, (b) short-period structures, (c) middle-rise non-symmetric frame structures, (d) middle-rise vertical-irregular frame structures, (e) middle-rise base-isolated structures, etc. It had also been identified that the time history analysis method could be replaced by the pushover analysis method when the pushover analysis method was reliable. The solution of high-model problem in application of the pushover analysis method , which is firstly put forward in the field, made it possible to wide the applied scope of the pushover analysis method .