A Study on Seismic Evaluation and Retrofit of Fire Department Buildings

A Study on Seismic Evaluation and Retrofit of Fire Department Buildings

While an earthquake causes disasters, the fire department must be at the position of front line. The fire department will be the command post. Therefore, the seismic capacity of the fire department buildings must be higher than common general buildings. As the new technology is developed, the seismic design code is revised time after time. Some existing fire department buildings are designed according to the old code. These existing buildings may not satisfy the requirement of the new design code. The structural system of fire department buildings is very unique for the purpose of mobility of fire trucks. The fire trucks must quickly leave the buildings to execute their duty after the earthquake. Their structural systems may cause the weakness in seismic capacity. The fire department buildings not only need structural safety but also performance. Because earthquakes occur frequently in Taiwan, the seismic evaluation and retrofit technique of fire department buildings are very urgent topics. This project has completed the structure investigation of ten fire department buildings in Taipei. The preliminary seismic evaluation method was developed and used to evaluate the ten fire department buildings in Taipei. A detailed seismic evaluation method was also developed based on the push-over analysis. Two virtual fire department buildings were used as the examples of the detailed seismic evaluation method. According to the needs of performance of fire department, the damage ground acceleration and floor drift ratio are used as the numerical indexes of retrofit effect evaluation. One virtual fire department building used steel plate retrofit, wing wall retrofit, and extended column retrofit, and its seismic capacity after retrofit was evaluated.