Vulnerability of ordinary moment resistant concrete frames

The effects of structural modeling (bar slip in lap splice), ground motion selection process (epsilon effect) and size of a structure (number of bays and stories) on the fragility of reinforced concrete ordinary moment resisting frames are investigated. An analytical model is developed to account for bar slip in lap splice, which exhibits good correlation with existing experimental data. Then, incremental dynamic analysis is used to derive the fragility curves for four model structures. The model structures simulate frames with a different number of bays and stories. Finally, the fragility curves are corrected for the epsilon effect. The results show that slip in the lap splice can significantly increase the failure probability, especially for the collapse prevention limit state. At the same time, it is found that spectral shape has a significant impact on the fragility curves. It is also found that accounting for or ignoring bar slip or epsilon effects increases the probability of failure for larger structures. This indicates an unconservative bias in the safety of larger structures.