Seismic Assessment of a Hospital Building: A Case Study

Abstract

Presently, the occurrence of frequent earthquakes worldwide is becoming a noteworthy problem. Hospital buildings are one of the important structures in the living society as they aid to be the caring as well as curing unit in the human society whenever any hazardous situation arises. There are three components of a hospital building including Structural Component, Non - Structural Component and Functional Component, which directly or indirectly affects the operation and the management of the hospital building. Each time, if any portion of the world experiences any causality: Natural or Non - Natural, a good amount of damage and destruction is experienced. Hospital buildings plays a dynamic role in such situations: 1. Treating the victims and injured people, and 2. Act as a temporary accommodation for those people who lost their homes in the hazards. Therefore, the hospital buildings should be designed and constructed to have adequate stiffness and strength to not only withstand the disaster, but also can be used as a shelter or accommodation units during post - disaster conditions. This study includes the analysis of a hospital building located in the North - Eastern Region of high seismicity. The existing hospital structure is analyzed for determination of the weak structural members. The Northern Region of India falls in the Zone IV of Earthquake According to the Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India. The analysis tool considered for determining the behaviour of hospital building when subjected to seismic forces is ETABS 2019. The analysis considered for determining the effect of the lateral forces on the hospital building is Pushover Analysis. Indian Standard Codal Provisions of IS 1893: 2016 has been considered while applying the different loading conditions on the hospital building. Later, different materials for bracing have been compared to determine the best possible material or section for the hospital building to resist the seismic forces. After the conduction of the study, it as been observed that angle section of different dimensions of the legs are found to be the most efficient section.