In situ pushover test of school building structure of sin-chen junior high school in hualien county

Many low-rise school buildings in Taiwan suffered severe damages during the Chi-Chi Earthquake, and these buildings revealed the poor capacity of earthquake resistance. How to estimate the seismic capacity of existing school building is an important issue. Therefore, an in-situ pushover test of the existing school buildings in the Sin-Chen Junior High School was carried out. The available pushover analysis can be calibrated directly by an in-situ pushover test. The weak direction of a typical school building is along the direction of corridor. Therefore, the in-situ pushover test was performed along the corridor direction, and reaction was provided by the remaining half of same building reinforced with steel bracings. The pushover test of school building of the Sin-Chen Junior High School was conducted by the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering and the Dahan Institute of Technology. Test was carried out from January 20 to 29 of 2005. This paper reports the test setup, loading procedure, instrumentation and test results. Simplified analysis based on shear building assumption is also presented.