Seismic Assessment of an Existing Precast Reinforced Concrete Industrial Hall Based on the Full-Scale Tests of Joints—A Case Study

Abstract

Construction of precast reinforced concrete (PRC) industrial halls in seismically active areas has been increasing in recent decades. As connections are one of the most sensitive and vulnerable zones of PRC structures, there is a need to pay special attention to their investigation and modeling in seismic analysis. Knowing that each PRC system is specific and unique, this study aims to evaluate the actual seismic performances of PRC industrial halls built in the AMONT system, which represent a significant portion of the existing industrial building stock in Italy, the Balkans, and Turkey. As there is a lack of published research data on its specific joints, the results of the quasi-static full-scale experiments carried out up to failure on the models of four characteristic connections are presented. Since the implementation of nonlinear dynamic analysis in everyday engineering practice can be demanding, a simplified model of the structure considering the effects of the connections’ stiffness is proposed in this paper. The differences in the roof top displacements between the proposed model and the model with the rigid joints of the analyzed frames are in the range from 16.53% to 66.93%. The values of inter-story drift ratios are larger by 10–100% when the real stiffness of connections is considered, which is above the limit value provided by standard EN 1998-1. These results confirm the necessity of considering the nonlinear behavior and stiffness of connections in precast frame structures when determining displacements, which is particularly important for the verification of the serviceability limit state of structures in seismic regions.