Seismic vulnerability of the prefabricated Soviet great panel system in deteriorated and transformed buildings

Abstract

The prefabricated Soviet great panel system has shown  good earthquake resistance performance in several countries where it has been implemented. However, there are uncertainties with the buildings built in the city of Santiago de Cuba, the area of greatest seismic danger in the country. Due to the fact that the design codes of the time of the emergence of the prefabricated system have
already been repealed, together with the pathological damages and structural transformations carried out by the inhabitants. Therefore, a structural verification is required, through the checking of global control parameters, the eccentricities of the centers of mass with respect to the centers of stiffness, displacements and drifts of the floors, torsional stiffness, the P-Δ effects, among other aspects. Building U-142-143 is chosen for this analysis, mainly because it has critical operating conditions. It is concluded that, although the prefabricated system does not comply with all the current requirements of earthquake resistant design and
present significant irregularities in plan and elevation, the building analyzed according to the formulations in the codes used, can retain rigidity in the face of seismic action. A comparison between the building according to the original project and the current variant corroborates that the greatest changes are observed in the fundamental periods. Consequently there are variations in drift,
displacement and stiffness.