The vulnerability of medium-rise soft-story residential buildings under various earthquake records using capacity demand response spectrum analysis.

The 2015 Ranau Earthquake is the recent earthquake with the recorded highest intensity and tremors in East Malaysia. The earthquake measuring 5.9 on the Scale Richter has damaged many residential and public buildings, including schools, quarters, and mosques. Thus, the ability of these non-seismic designed reinforced concrete buildings to resist earthquake loading is the main concern amongst the engineers. Furthermore, a soft-story building that has open space ground floor and served as a vehicle parking space is not good at resisting seismic load because it is low in ductility, strength, and stiffness. After an earthquake occurs, the lateral loads from the earthquake can shake the buildings depend on how strong the earthquake is. Damage to the building can be seen in the aftermath, where usually is located at the beam-column joints. The aim of this study is to assess the vulnerability of soft-story residential buildings under various earthquake records using Capacity Demand Response Spectrum. Two buildings that are SMK Ranau's staff quarter and Hospital Ranau's staff quarter, were selected for the seismic assessment. With Design Basis Earthquake (DBE) with Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA=0.12g) and Maximum Considered Earthquake (MCE) with PGA=0.22g were considered to determine the buildings Capacity Demand Response Spectrum (CDRS). Then, three previous earthquake records were chosen to validate the vulnerability of the two buildings against the earthquakes. From the result, it shows that SMK Ranau's staff quarter can still survive to above 5.5 scale Richter, with PGA not more than 0.12g, as stated in EC8, with some minor retrofitting works to repair the building but for Hospital Ranau's staff quarter can only sustain DBE with Type 1 and Type 2 spectra and MCE Type 1 spectra. For the CDRS under the previous earthquake, both buildings can only survive the Kunak earthquake and will severely damage if the same PGA as El Centro North-South and El Centro East-West earthquakes occur. From this study, it seems that the use of Capacity Demand Response Spectrum Analysis is essential to predict the vulnerability of buildings against earthquakes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]