Budapest University of Technology and EconomicsFaculty of Civil Engineering - Since 1782

Pre-code buildings and structures designed in accordance to earlier standards are often vulnerable for extreme effects, such as earthquakes, heavy snowstorm, tornadoes, intentional blast loading, etc. Frequency and intensity of such extreme events are gradually increasing due to e.g. the climate change, strong urbanization, globalization, etc. Improving the safety of such structures typically requires strengthening or retrofitting these structures. Although several retrofitting techniques are publicly available, design and completion of such improvement of safety level is further complicated by the fact that the engineering communities of areas that were historically considered less prone to such events have no experience and thus are not well prepared. For example, Hungary was traditionally considered as low seismicity region; however, new researches confirmed that the seismicity is rather moderate and in accordance to Eurocodes, structures need to be designed for earthquakes.

Aim of the research is to analyse vulnerability of pre-code and historical structures subjected to possible extreme hazards and develop conceptual design proposals for vulnerability analysis and retrofitting techniques that are economically adaptable in regions of moderate hazards.

Special attention should be paid for historical buildings, bridges and monuments due to their public value and status of cultural heritage. Further special aspect is that ageing and earlier structural inventions may drastically change their performance and thus proper evaluation of the current performance is a complicated task.

 

The proposed work phases could be classified as follows: 

    1) Literature review. 

    2) Definition of archetype buildings, selection of historical structures.

    3) Historical study for the selected structures.

    4) Numerical model development of archetype buildings.

    5) Identification of extreme hazards for selected buildings. Prediction of future events: frequency, intensity.

    6) Analysis of structures, risk assessment for the selected buildings and scenarios.

    7) Adaptation, design and analysis of retrofitting techniques.

    8) Comparison of feasible retrofitting techniques.

    9) Design concept proposals, design method proposal and recommendations for future works.