Sustainable and resilient seismic design of reinforced concrete frames with rocking isolation on spread footings: Fid-Bau Portal

Sustainable and resilient seismic design of reinforced concrete frames with rocking isolation on spread footings

Mergos, Panagiotis E.

Highlights • Rocking isolation on spread footings offers superior seismic performance. • For first time, it is utilized to minimize embodied carbon of concrete frames. • New resilient seismic design methodology of concrete frames on rocking footings. • A genetic algorithm is used to minimize embodied carbon. • Rocking footings reduce the carbon footprint of concrete frames up to 40%.

Abstract The rapidly evolving climate change together with the urgent need of modern societies for resilience against catastrophic threats set the sustainable and resilient seismic design of reinforced concrete (RC) structures as a priority. Rocking isolation of RC frames resting on spread footings has been proven numerically and experimentally to offer superior seismic performance with reduced seismic demands in the superstructure. At the same time, rocking footings do not require special construction solutions and can be readily implemented in the current state of practice. To exploit these benefits, the present study, for first time, utilizes rocking footings in the optimum design of RC frames for high seismic resilience and reduced environmental impact. This is achieved by incorporating a resilient seismic design methodology into a numerical optimization procedure that is aiming to minimize embodied carbon. Applications of the proposed approach show that the carbon footprint of RC frames can be reduced by 40% due to rocking isolation on spread footings. The benefits become more important as the level of seismic hazard increases. It is also found that the environmental benefits of rocking footings for RC frames are rather insensitive to the characteristics of ground motions and the uncertainties of soil properties.