Scope

Earthquakes are natural disasters that can cause significant damage to buildings, infrastructure, and human life. Unfortunately, many regions of the world that are prone to earthquakes have sub-standard building stocks, consisting of structures that are often constructed using low-strength concrete and poor reinforcement details. These sub-standard buildings are vulnerable to damage during earthquakes due to their limited deformation capacity and insufficient lateral stiffness and strength. These buildings fail to meet the requirements of modern seismic codes or even the design requirements of their time of construction. It is important to understand the challenges associated with sub-standard building stocks and work towards improving the seismic safety of buildings in earthquake-prone regions. In particular, the columns of these structures exhibit unsatisfactory and undesirable behavior under lateral loads, which can be attributed to low compressive strength of the concrete and inadequate reinforcement detailing. After the disastrous consequences of recent damaging earthquakes, the present state of seismic performance of the existing buildings has become alarming.