Abstract

Over the past two decades Turkey has been hit by several moderate to large earthquakesthat resulted in significant loss of life and property. Remarkable number of casualties andheavily damaged or collapsed buildings has emphasized inadequate seismic performance ofmultistory reinforced concrete buildings, typically three to eight stories in height. The aimof this study is to evaluate the seismic performance of the mid-rise reinforced concrete buildings which are major part of building stock. In performance evaluation, destructiveearthquakes over the past two decades have been taken into consideration. Fourteen 4- and7-story buildings are selected to reflect existing construction practice, including structural irregularities. Capacity curve of each building was obtained by pushover analysis. Then,their seismic displacement demands were determined using nonlinear time history analysisunder selected ground motions. The inelastic dynamic characteristics were represented byequivalent single-degree-of-freedom systems. Seismic performance evaluation is carriedout per recently published 2007 Turkish Earthquake Code.