Extending displacement-based earthquake loss assessment (DBELA) for the computation of fragility curves

Abstract

This paper presents a new procedure to derive fragility functions for populations of buildings that relies on the displacement-based earthquake loss assessment (DBELA) methodology. In the method proposed herein, thousands of synthetic buildings have been produced considering the probabilistic distribution describing the variability in geometrical and material properties. Then, their nonlinear capacity has been estimated using the DBELA method and their response against a large set of ground motion records has been estimated. Global limit states are used to estimate the distribution of buildings in each damage state for different levels of ground motion, and a regression algorithm is applied to derive fragility functions for each limit state. The proposed methodology is demonstrated for the case of ductile and non-ductile Turkish reinforced concrete frames with masonry infills.