SEISMIC RETROFITTING OF A DAMAGED SCHOOL BUILDING

Abstract

Lessons learnt from past devastating earthquakes repeatedly emphasize on importance of school buildings. In our country performance of school structures are worst in past earthquakes and increase vulnerability of school buildings for damage had multiplied the intensity of impact on society after earthquake occurrence. Collapse of school buildings causes loss of lives of most sensitive part of society i.e. children. The loss to children has huge impact on the community. The school also serve as shelter to homeless during the earthquake. Role of schools in pre and post scenario of earthquake event demand Immediate Occupancy level performance. A large number of school buildings are not earthquake resistant. It is economically not feasible to demolish and build again all these important buildings with earthquake resistant features. Structural engineers have developed a number of retrofitting techniques which can be used to upgrade the performance level of existing structure. In this paper as a case study a school building which has suffered damage in 18 th September 2011 earthquake, has been evaluated and retrofitting measures have been suggested to upgrade performance level of the building to make it safer against future earthquakes.