Seismic design and evaluation of non-structural building components

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Non-Structural Components (NSCs) which include architectural components, building services and building content, account for 75-85% of the total construction cost in buildings. Typical damage reported in recent strong earthquakes reveals the heavy economic losses arising from damage to NSCs even in buildings that perform well. Loss or disruption of functionality can be particularly important in the case of critical facilities such as hospitals, emergency management centers, water supply and water treatment facilities. The National Building Code of Canada (NBCC) philosophy seeks the survival of NSCs without addressing their vulnerability. It assumes that the behavior of NSCs and the building are decoupled and provides empirical equations to estimate peak horizontal floor acceleration demand on NSCs. The peak vertical floor acceleration demand on NSCs is not addressed yet.*******The long-term objective of this program is to build an internationally-recognized research program studying the contribution of typical NSCs to the seismic performance of buildings. In the framework of the Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering, the enhanced seismic performance of NSCs is nowadays widely recognized to be a key factor in order to control economic losses and downtime in addition to life safety.*******As a step towards this goal, this 5-year research program will focus on enhancing the seismic target performance levels achieved by applying the empirical equations available in the current editions of the NBCC. In a Canadian seismic hazard context, the vulnerability of «acceleration-sensitive» NSCs to earthquakes will be assessed by determining rationally their seismic demand in terms of peak horizontal and vertical floor accelerations and spectra. Then, the interaction of NSCs with the building structure will be investigated by integrating NSCs into the structural analysis of the building and proposing simplified modeling techniques.*******Finally, this program will help to support five graduate students.******