Resumen

LOPEZ, Oscar A. indicators of seismic risk in school buildings in Venezuela. IMME [online]. 2009, vol.47, n.1, pp.17-46. ISSN 0376-723X.

A revision of the effects of 26 earthquakes that took place in the planet from 1933 points out the high vulnerability of school buildings that have caused the loss of thousands of lives. In the case of Venezuela, 16 earthquakes that took place in the XX century and caused damage in schools were identified. Several buildings that belong to the denominated Old-Type I schools that were constructed in the decade of 1950 in several places of the country, were damaged by the Carúpano (1974), Táchira (1981), El Pilar (1.986) and Curarigua (1991) earthquakes.  In particular, two of these buildings and other two that belongs to the denominated Box-Type schools that were constructed in the decade of 1970-1980, collapsed during the Cariaco 1997 earthquake causing loss of lives. The poor behavior of these structures is attributed to earthquake-resistant deficiencies that were typical of buildings constructed with the codes of 1939, 1947, 1955 and 1967, that is to say, low stiffness and resistance to lateral load, low energy dissipation capacity and the presence of short columns that precipitate brittle failure modes. A methodology for the determination of risk and damage indicators in a population of existing school buildings subjected to seismic motion is proposed. The damage and risk indicators are quantified in terms of the ratio between the displacement demand and the displacement capacity, using the age and the location of the building as basic information. The procedure assumes that the building was designed and constructed fulfilling the building code at the moment of its construction. Since this methodology do not require structural planes nor of inspection at the site, it can be applied to a complete population of buildings which would later allow selecting those of greater risk index that would go to the following phase of evaluation involving a visual inspection. In the proposed methodology it is only required to know three parameters in order to determine the risk index and the state of damage; these parameters are the effective period, the resisting base shear force expressed in non-dimensional form as a fraction of the weight of the building, and the factor of ductile capacity. Expressions to estimate the resisting base shear force for school  buildings designed according to the different codes that have been in use in the country from the year of 1939, is presented. A procedure to estimate the peak ground acceleration necessary to reach each damage state is proposed. An example of application of the propose methodology in a typical school building shows the elevated risk of those schools constructed according to the older seismic codes.

Palabras clave : Schools; seismic risk; vulnerability; educational buildings; risk indicators; risk index; damage indicator.

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