Seismic Retrofiting of a Ten-Story Steel Framed Hospital

With the knowledge of constant threat of major earthquakes and expecially the latest dramatic and catastrophic earthquake of northern Iran in 1990 and recent quakes of 1997,a multi-disciplin- ary program was launched in Iran to assess seismic vulnerability of important buildings and possibly offer cost-effective strengthening solutions for the ones in need. As a result of the latest awakening toward upgrading the existing buildings in the country, especially capital city of Tehran, this papaer will concentrate on the upgrade design of a ten story steel framed hospital for both vertical and lateral loads, providing information on the strengthening procedures and considerations used to achieve the goals of the project. The existing structure under investigation is a ten story steel framed skeleton with four story completed and under use, constructed to old seismic code in 1985 and left alone due to economical reasons until 1997 the beginning of this project. Four different schemes were considered for this particular building which will be discussed herein with main considerations being economical and easy construction. Static equivalent procedure was utilized in the design of the upgrade system and then, behavior and design was controlled using non-linear dynamic analysis utilizing DRAIN-2D program. Details of this project will be discussed in this paper.