Seismic Response Evaluation of Precast Concrete Structures

The use of precast concrete techniques in building construction has much potential. In mass housing projects, precast concrete use is becoming popular in India. The performance of the precast concrete frame is governed by individual beam-column connection performance. Many experimental and analytical studies to evaluate the performance of precast beam-column connection under seismic loading are reported in the literature, but the studies to evaluate the overall performance of precast concrete frame structures are scanty. Herein, the performance of a ten-story precast concrete frame is evaluated under near-field and far-field ground motions. Normalized moment-rotation curves for non-emulated and corresponding monolithic beam-column connections available in the literature are used in modeling. Joints of precast and monolithic frames are modeled by the link element at the beam-column interface and default plastic hinge located at 0.1L distance from the center of the column. Nonlinear time history analysis is performed for precast and corresponding monolithic frame structures under various ground excitations. The average responses were obtained from an ensemble of seven earthquakes for each type of earthquake. The responses include peak top-story displacement, maximum base shear, maximum inter-story drift ratio (MIDR), and maximum absolute acceleration. The precast and monolithic frame responses are compared to illustrate the seismic behavior of the precast building frames.