Estudio de la vulnerabilidad sísmica y diseño del reforzamiento estructural del edificio administrativo de la Escuela Politécnica Nacional, Quito, Ecuador

Abstract

The present project arises from the need to know the current state of the buildings of the National Polytechnical School, in order to determine its seismic vulnerability to the occurrence of an earthquake with characteristics similar to that of April 16, 2016, on the Ecuadorian coasts. Being chosen for this study the administration building of this educational entity. For this, the greatest possible and available information of the building is collected due to its age, the analysis of each structural element is performed, as well as an overall analysis of the structure to decree a structural and seismic safety diagnosis, finding that the building has a excessive lateral flexibility, poor dynamic behavior and deficiencies in its structural elements, resulting in high seismic vulnerability. Several structural reinforcement alternatives were sought to cover these problems, so one option was to implement structural cutting walls on the periphery of the building so as not to cause problems of operation within the building and not to cause many overthrows, and thus to stiffen to the whole structure and to alleviate the deficiencies of its structural elements. It is a second option of reinforcement, which was the filler walls in the porticos, being an option currently used in reinforcements of flexible structures. Finally, the analysis of both alternatives is performed, determining that the best choice is the cutting walls at the periphery of the building and throughout its height, as it provides great rigidity throughout the structure and gives it ideal dynamic behavior, while which the other alternative failed to adequately rigidize the entire structure, due to the structural configuration of the building.