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A new demountable seismic-resistant joint to improve industrial building reparability

Margherita Pongiglione (Department of Civil, Chemical, and Environmental Engineering, Universita degli Studi di Genova Scuola Politecnica, Genova, Italy)
Chiara Calderini (Department of Civil, Chemical, and Environmental Engineering, Universita degli Studi di Genova Scuola Politecnica, Genova, Italy)
George Bradley Guy (School of Architecture and Planning, The Catholic University of America, Washington, District of Columbia, USA)

International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment

ISSN: 1759-5908

Article publication date: 12 June 2017

187

Abstract

Purpose

In seismic-prone areas, post-event operability is an important issue for steel warehouses. Even if surviving earthquakes with minimal probability of collapse, these structures might suffer so much damage, that their repair costs would be prohibitive. Strategies for limiting the building's damaged zones to specific parts (or “fuses”) can reduce repair costs. However, the replaceable part is limited to a small portion of the structure, whereas the rest cannot be disassembled. This is an issue for structures whose life span depends more likely on economics rather than on structural performances. Therefore, making them easily disassembled would be an advantage not only in seismic areas but also in any industrialized area. The purpose of this paper is to explore the “Design for Disassembly” (DfD) approach to complement seismic design and find a compromise between them.

Design/methodology/approach

In this work, one single type of structures was analysed (the moment-resisting frame), focusing on the design of a “disassemblable” seismic-resistant steel connection. The design process involved several iterations until an “optimum” compromise between seismic design and DfD was met.

Findings

This study shows that a compromise between seismic design and DfD is possible. In this case, the compromise was achieved at the expenses of more complex design calculations and a greater number of components than standard connections. However, this would be compensated for by a higher residual value for the entire structure.

Originality/value

Eventually, it was proved that a metric for assessing DfD steel connections is possible, but structural analyses are needed to validate it.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their gratitude to the participants in the survey, who have willingly shared their precious time during the process of interviewing: Kim Roddis, Frances Yang, Lauren Wingo, Mark Webster, Matthew Faivre and Corey Griffin.

This paper forms part of a special section “Selected papers from CIB World Building Congress 2016”.

Citation

Pongiglione, M., Calderini, C. and Guy, G.B. (2017), "A new demountable seismic-resistant joint to improve industrial building reparability", International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment, Vol. 8 No. 3, pp. 251-262. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJDRBE-06-2016-0026

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited

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