Vulnerability of High-Rise Buildings in Kuala Lumpur Subjected to Acheh Earthquake Event

Abstract

The earthquake study is relevant even though Malaysia is outside the earthquake region but still had experienced and did suffer from major cases in the past like tsunami. Engineers should concern about and consider the loading for reinforced concrete building due to earthquake in Malaysia’s building design procedure. The study addresses the earthquake study due to performance of critical frame reinforced concrete building which were subjected to low-intensity earthquakes effects. Building of Ampang Jaya Municipal Council (MPAJ), Employees’ Provident Fund (KWSP), Block F (Public Work Department, JKR), and Department of Survey and Mapping Malaysia (JUPEM) were chosen as main models for this study. The building was analyzed using Finite Element Modeling (FEM) under different types of analyses using IDARC2D depend on variety of earthquake intensities from Time History Analysis (THA) considering low to medium earthquake intensities. The yield point at beam-column connections was analyzed to determine the damage index and the damage level of the building. The buildings analyzed, which were subjected to the Acheh earthquake ground motion, developed plastic hinge due to the earthquake intensity of 0.012 g for all buildings except building of Employees’ Provident Fund (KWSP) which developed plastic hinge due to the earthquake intensity of 0.05 g and had damage indexes in the range 0.00 (no damage) to 1.0 (collapse). A greater damage index means that the members yield earlier and the plastic rotation is larger and vice versa. As for the result, the damage to columns is light, the damage level of most columns is “medium destruction,” and the performance of the high-performance concrete is satisfactory. While the damage in the beams is much serious, the distribution of the damage index reflects the seismic design principle of “strong column, weak beam.”