Seismic vulnerability assessment of ageing reinforced concrete structures under real mainshock-aftershock ground motions

Ageing structures located in moderate to high seismicity regions are exposed to multiple natural stressors during their lifetime. Large earthquake events coupled with environmental aggressive agents increase the progressive failure probability of these structures. The accumulated damage during the main earthquake event might be exacerbated by its following aftershocks. This might result in catastrophic failure of these structures, and consequently, result in several socio-economic losses. Taking such progressive deterioration mechanism into consideration, the current study presents a framework to assess the vulnerability of ageing Reinforced Concrete (RC) frames subject to real Mainshock-Aftershock (MS-AS) ground motion sequences. Employing an advanced fibre-based finite element modelling technique, the nonlinear static and dynamic behaviour of a case-study RC frame with various ages is simulated under 48 real MS-AS record pairs. Quantifying corrosion-variant damage states, the age-specific fragility curves are developed for the considered structure under both single MS events and MS-AS sequences. It was found that the severely corroded RC frames are most likely to collapse before the second event comes up. Moreover, results show that the PGA ratio of AS to MS plays a critical role in seismic vulnerability assessment of highly corrosion-damaged RC frames.