Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 116 (2019) 709–713

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Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/soildyn

Fragility curves for mixed concrete/steel frames subjected to seismic T

excitation
⁎
Nikos G. Pnevmatikosa, , George A. Papagiannopoulosb, Georgios S. Papavasileioua
a
Department of Civil Engineering, University of West Attica, GR-12210 Egaleo, Athens, Greece
b
Department of Civil Engineering, University of Patras, GR-26504 Patras, Greece

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Use of appropriate fragility curves for structures is an essential and basic tool for earthquake loss estimation.
Seismic fragility curves Fragility curves for frames made only of concrete or only of steel members are already available in the literature.
Mixed concrete/steel frames In this paper, fragility curves for plane mixed concrete/steel moment resisting framed structures are developed.
Vulnerability curves Parametric numerical results for these mixed structures are presented and discussed.
Mixed structural systems

1. Introduction An analytical derivation of seismic vulnerability functions is pre-

The reliable assessment of structural damage after an earthquake
event is essential to organize the emergency response and to facilitate
the handling of the structural and economic losses. Fragility curves are
basic components in the process of earthquake loss estimation.
The methods to estimate seismic fragility functions can be grouped
in three categories, i.e., the empirical, the analytical, and the expert
opinion ones. Moreover, procedures that combine two of the afore-
mentioned methods can be also found.
Empirical methods perform regression analysis between the ob-
served seismic performance and the seismic excitation. The work of
Wesson et al. [1], employs a large database of insurance claims from the
1994 Northridge earthquake, a rare occurrence in the public domain.
The GEM Vulnerability Consortium contributes to empirical methods,
attempting to harmonize a variety of damage scales and to create a
single one with global applicability. The US Geological Survey's Prompt
Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response (PAGER) project offers
another approach to empirical vulnerability.
In analytical methods numerical calculations are performed in order
to evaluate damage or loss. A detailed description is given in ATC-58
[2], which is the most recent and shows the tendency of the relative
area of research which is reflected in the guidelines. In analytical
methods, details such as the construction material, lateral force re-
sisting system, height category, occupancy category, the area of the
building and all structural and non-structural components are taken
into consideration. Among the commercial software that makes use of
analytical methods, one can mention HAZUS-MH, PACT, EQRM, ELER,
ERN Vulnerability and SELENA.
sented in the work of Porter et al. [3]. In the work of Silva et al. [4], a
study of static and dynamic procedures for estimating the nonlinear
response of buildings has been carried out in order to evaluate the
impact of the selected methodology on the resulting capacity, fragility,
vulnerability and risk outputs. Hosseinpour and Abdelnaby [5], derive
fragility curves for reinforced concrete buildings subjected to multiple
earthquakes, considering the accumulated damage due to previous
events.
Hybrid methods combine statistical data with appropriately pro-
cessed results from nonlinear dynamic or static analyses. This combi-
nation permits the interpolation of statistical data to peak ground ac-
celerations (PGAs) and/or to spectral displacements for which no data
is available. In particular, Kappos and Panagopoulos [6], determine
capacity curves and vulnerability (fragility) curves in terms of PGAs, as
well as spectral displacements, for all types of reinforced concrete
buildings, which are often met in Greece. Moreover, Siqueira et al. [7],
constructed fragility curves for isolated bridges in eastern Canada using
experimental results and Cardone et al. [8], defined fragility curves for
buildings built before the ‘70s.
Statistical procedures for contracting earthquake damage fragility
functions are employed by Lallemant et al. [9]. Noh et al. [10], de-
veloped fragility functions derived from the wavelet-based damage
sensitive feature (DSF). Gernay et al. [11], proposed fragility curves for
steel buildings subjected to fire. Mitropoulou and Papadrakakis [12],
worked on developing fragility curves based on neural network IDA
predictions. Del Gaudio et al. [13], developed fragility curves on a
database of 250 reinforced concrete buildings, using a Monte Carlo si-
mulation technique.

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: pnevma@uniwa.gr (N.G. Pnevmatikos), gpapagia@upatras.gr (G.A. Papagiannopoulos).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soildyn.2018.09.037
Received 25 September 2018; Accepted 27 September 2018
0267-7261/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
N.G. Pnevmatikos et al.
A lot of studies have been conducted in developing fragility curves
for concrete or steel structures. However, fragility curves for material
irregularity in height concrete-steel frame structures (mixed concrete-
steel frame structures) is very limited. In the work of Papageorgiou and
Gantes [14], the dynamic response of elastic multi-degree of freedom
structures that are irregular in height, consisting of two parts, a lower
part made of concrete and an upper part made of steel is presented.
Skalomenos et al. [15], obtain fragility curves for three typical concrete
filled steel tubes, CFT, in plane moment-resisting frames, MRFs, de-
signed according to the Eurocodes for various levels of modelling so-
phistication through nonlinear time-history analyses. Güneyisi [16],
investigated the seismic reliability of three-storey and eight-storey steel
moment resisting frames before and after retrofitting with buckling
restrained braces (BRBs) in terms of seismic fragility and risk analysis.
More specifically in [16], fragility curves from the natural ground
motions with low and high a/v ratio, (peak ground acceleration divided
by the peak ground velocity) are constructed. Maley et al. [17], com-
pared the direct displacement based design, DDBD, method and force
based design, FBD, method of mixed moment resistant frame systems.
In this paper, seismic fragility curves for mixed concrete-steel frame
structures are developed and compared with those corresponding to
purely reinforced concrete or purely steel moment resisting frame
structures. These structures consist of reinforced concrete frames at the
lower storeys and steel frames at the upper storeys. Such buildings are
typically the result of a building initially constructed as a reinforced
concrete building and at a later time more storeys were added as steel
moment resisting frames. Due to the different time of construction,
those buildings are often designed with different design codes and ap-
proaches. However, if the lower part of the building was constructed
after the 90's, then both parts are designed according to the Eurocodes,
so it can be considered as a mixed concrete/steel building since its
original design. In the present work, two types of mixed buildings are
considered: those entirely designed with currently applicable codes but
at a different time and those that their lower part is made of a re-
inforced concrete frame that preexisted the upper steel part by many
years. The former type is an originally designed mixed concrete/steel
building, whereas for the latter type more lenient code requirements
were implemented during the design of the reinforced concrete part and
current design codes have been employed for the upper steel part.
2. Theoretical background and codes for the development of
fragility curves
The probability of structure being in or exceeding a given damage
state, ds, is modeled as a cumulative lognormal distribution. For
structural damage, given the ground acceleration, ag, the probability of
being in or exceeding a damage state, ds, is modeled as:
⎡ 1 ag ⎞ ⎤
P [ds | ag ] = Φ ⎢ ∙ln ⎜⎛
̅ ⎠⎥
⎟
σln (ag, ds) a
⎝ g, ds (1)
⎣ ⎦
̅ is the median value of ground acceleration at which the
ag, ds
building reaches the threshold of the damage state (ds)
σln (ag, ds) is the standard deviation of the natural logarithm of ground
acceleration of damage state, ds,
Φ is the standard normal cumulative distribution function.
The median value of ground acceleration, ag, ds
̅ , and the standard
deviation of the natural logarithm of ground acceleration, σln (ag, ds), are
calculated through a number of dynamic analyses for different earth-
quakes until a given damage state, ds is reached. Non-linear static
procedures can also be applied in order to calculate these parameters.
Furthermore, fragility curves can be derived by using other intensity
measures such as spectral acceleration, spectral displacement or
earthquake intensity.
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Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 116 (2019) 709–713
In HAZUS MR4 Technical Manual [18], the spectral displacement or
acceleration is calculated using the classical push over method combine
in conjunction with the capacity spectrum method. Non-linear static
procedures represent a simplified approach for the assessment of the
seismic behavior of structures, included in guidelines such as ATC-40,
FEMA-440 in the United States and Eurocode 8 in Europe.
In this study the median value of ground acceleration, ag, ds
̅ , and the
standard deviation of the natural logarithm of ground acceleration,
σln (ag, ds), are calculated through a number of non-linear dynamic ana-
lyses for different earthquakes. The procedure of the determination of
the fragility curves can be summarized in the following algorithm:
Step 1. Initially, the damage states of the building are determined.
The inter-story drift ratio is chosen as a measure of the defined
damage states. Then, earthquake excitation records that are com-
patible with the seismic hazard of the region in which the building is
located are selected. In this work, three damage states are studied.
The first damage state, ds,1, is when the maximum inter-story drift
ratio is 1%. The second and third damage states, ds,2 and ds,3,
correspond to inter-story drift ratios equal to 1.5% and 2% respec-
tively. A total number of 10 seismic excitations are used.
Step 2. For the given damage stage, ds,i, by an iterative procedure,
non-linear time history analysis is applied incrementally for each
earthquake excitation. The minimum earthquake acceleration which
for the maximum inter-story drift ratio of the structure exceeds the
limit for damage stage i, ds,i, is determined. The above iterative
procedure is repeated for the next damage state, until the minimum
earthquake accelerations are defined for all damage states. All
minimum accelerations for each damage state in a group are re-
corded.
Step 3. For each damage state, ds,i the median value of ground
acceleration and the standard deviation of the natural logarithm of
ground acceleration are calculated. The probability of being in or
exceeding a damage state, ds,i, according to Eq. (1) is then com-
puted. Once all aforementioned results are available the fragility
curves for each damage stage, ds,i, can be plotted.
An overview of the algorithm applied to extract the fragility curves
is shown in Fig. 1.
3. Fragility curves for mixed concrete/steel frames – numerical
applications
The mixed concrete/steel frame modeled herein is a five-storey
building; the first three storeys are constructed as a reinforced concrete
frame and the next two as a steel moment resisting frame considering its
bottom columns fixed to the reinforced concrete frame. This building is
typical of an existing reinforced concrete structure in which the owners
decided to add one or two extra storeys, something that is typically
realized by using a steel moment resisting frame. Because of the
Fig. 1. Flowchart of the procedure of determination of the fragility curve.
N.G. Pnevmatikos et al.
Fig. 2. The mixed concrete/steel frame and the material distribution.
different time of construction, the reinforced concrete part of the
building is assumed to have been designed according to the previous
Greek Design Code for Reinforced Concrete while the upper steel part is
designed according to the Eurocode 3, (EC3). Two models are assessed.
In the first model, both parts of the structure conform to the current
design codes, but were constructed at a different time. In the second
model, the lower part, i.e. the reinforced concrete frame, was built
many years before the upper part was added, using the more lenient
requirements defined in the previous design code. The upper steel part
is designed according to the current code. The column bases of the
reinforced concrete building are modeled as fixed supports.
The structural system of the mixed concrete/steel frames is shown in
Fig. 2.
The fixed plane frame has three bays with 5 m span each, while the
typical story high is 3 m. The dead and live loads are 40 kN/m and
15 kN/m, respectively, and they are applied on the beams as distributed
loads. The materials used for the lower part are C20/25 concrete with
B500C reinforcement steel for the first model and C16/20 with S400
reinforcement steel for the second model. The upper part (fourth and
fifth storey) are constructed by S275 structural steel in both models.
Fig. 3. Modelling parameters of the mixed concrete/steel frame.
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Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 116 (2019) 709–713
For the first model, the concrete column sections are 50 × 50 cm
with 8#18 longitudinal reinforcement per side and #10/10 cm stirrups.
The beam section is 60 × 30 cm wide with 4#16 longitudinal re-
inforcement at the bottom and 2#12 at the top, while it has #10/15 cm
vertical reinforcement. In the second model, the concrete column sec-
tions are 35 × 35 cm wide with 4#14 longitudinal reinforcement per
side and #8/20 cm vertical reinforcement along their height. The beam
sections are 60 × 30 cm wide with 3#14 longitudinal reinforcement at
the bottom and 2#12 at the top, while they have #8/20 cm vertical
reinforcement. The upper part for both models consists of HE260B steel
columns and HE260A steel beams. The geometric layout and the
member sections for the first model are shown in Fig. 3.
Ten earthquake excitations are used in order to derive the fragility
curves for the mixed concrete/steel frames. The characteristics of the
selected earthquakes are shown in Table 1. Obviously, if a larger
number of earthquakes is used, more accurate fragility curves can be
obtained.
The inter-story drift ratio is chosen as an indicator for the damage
state of the frames. Three damage states are determined. The first da-
mage state, ds,1, is defined when the maximum inter-story drift ratio is
1%. The second and third damage states, ds,2 and ds,3, correspond to
inter-story drift ratios equal to 1.5% and 2% respectively.
For the non-linear time history analysis, a concentrated non-linear
behavior (lumped plasticity) at the end of the members is considered.
The Takeda hysteretic model is used for the dynamic non-linear beha-
vior of the elements. The Hilber-Hughes-Taylor time integration pro-
cedure is selected with parameters γ = 0.5, β = 0.25 and α = 0.
Based on the procedure shown in Fig. 1, the fragility curves for the
mixed concrete/steel frames are obtained for the three defined damage
states. The structural fragility curve parameters, median and lognormal
standard deviation for both models, are calculated and shown in
Table 2.
Using the values of the fragility curve parameters shown in Table 2,
the fragility curves of mixed concrete/steel frames for the two models
for the three damage states are obtained and shown in Figs. 4 and 5.
The HAZUS methodology proposes values for the fragility curve
N.G. Pnevmatikos et al. Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 116 (2019) 709–713

Table 1
Selected earthquake ground motions.
No. Date Record name Comp. Station name PGA (g)

1 1980/06/09 Victoria, Mexico N045 6604 Cerro Prieto 0.621

2 1992/04/25 Cape Mendocino NS 89324 Rio Dell Overpass 0.549
3 1978/08/13 Santa Barbara N048 283 Santa Barbara Courthouse 0.203
4 1978/08/13 Santa Barbara N138 283 Santa Barbara Courthouse 0.102
5 1999/09/20 Chi-Chi, Taiwan NS TCU095 0.712
6 1994/01/17 Northridge EW 90021 LA - N Westmoreland 0.401
7 1989/10/18 Loma Prieta EW 58065 Saratoga - Aloha Ave 0.512
8 1992/06/28 Landers NS 22170 Joshua Tree 0.284
9 1976/09/15 Friuli, Italy EW 8014 Forgaria Cornino 0.26
10 1994/01/17 Northridge NS 90019 San Gabriel - E. Gr. Ave. 0.256

Table 2
Fragility curve parameters, median and lognormal standard deviation of three structural damage states ds.
Damage state (interstory drift ratio) ̅ (g)
Median of ground acceleration, a g, ds Lognormal standard deviation of ground acceleration σ ln (ag, ds ) (g)

1st Model, Current code 2nd Model, Low code 1st Model, Current code 2nd Model, Low code
ds,1 (1%) 0.486 0.243 0.473 0.419
ds,2 (1.5%) 0.751 0.364 0.529 0.432
ds1 (2%) 0.961 0.521 0.534 0.456

parameters, median and lognormal standard deviations, either for

Fig. 4. Fragility curves of mixed concrete/steel frame (1st model with current
code) for the three damage stages.
Fig. 5. Fragility curves of mixed concrete/steel frame (2nd model with low
code) for the three damage stages.
Fig. 6. Fragility curves for concrete, steel and two models of mixed frame for
damage state corresponding to 2% inter-story drift ratio.
purely steel moment resisting frames or for purely reinforced concrete
frames with medium height (approximately 4–7storeys) designed for
the high-seismicity level.
Based on the values of fragility curve parameters proposed in
HAZUS methodology, the fragility curves for steel and concrete struc-
tures for high-seismicity level and for 2% drift ratio as a damage state,
are drawn and are compared with the fragility curves of the mixed
structure.
It is observed that for the damage state with maximum inter-story
drift over 2%, ds,3, the median value of ground acceleration calculated
for mixed concrete/steel frame is higher than the values proposed in
HAZUS methodology for both concrete and steel frame. The differences
in median values are 35% and 24% for purely steel frame and purely
reinforced concrete frame, respectively.
In contrast, the standard deviation of the ground acceleration, for
damage state with inter-story drift 2%, ds,2, calculated for the mixed
concrete/steel frames is lower than the values proposed in HAZUS
methodology for both reinforced concrete and steel frames. The varia-
tion in the standard deviation value is 20% and is the same for both the
purely steel and the purely reinforced concrete frame respectively.
A comparison of fragility curves for concrete, steel and the two
models of mixed frames for the damage state corresponding to 2% inter-
story drift ratio, is presented in Fig. 6. It is observed that the mixed
frame, designed using current seismic codes, is found to be less vul-
nerable than all the other three types. The mixed frame with the low
code requirements is more vulnerable than all the other three types.
Additionally, a thorough observation shows that the reinforced con-
crete frame is marginally less vulnerable than the steel frame.
The fragility curves obtained for such type of structures are also
compared with fragility curves for concrete or steel structures that are
proposed in literature. The comparison shows that a mixed concrete/
steel frame designed according to the current codes is less vulnerable
than the frames assumed purely steel or purely reinforced concrete and
designed with the latest code. The mixed frame with the low code re-
quirements is more vulnerable than all of the other three types. The
purely reinforced concrete frame is marginally less vulnerable than the
purely steel frame. In order to generalized the above outcome of the
present study more analysis cases should be considered. The results of
this study can be added to the existing literature on fragility curves for
different types of structures, improving the understanding and appli-
cation of earthquake loss estimation procedures. Additionally, it allows

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N.G. Pnevmatikos et al. Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 116 (2019) 709–713

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