SIMULATION OF THE NONLINEAR SEISMIC PERFORMANCE OF A SCHOOL BUILDING IN NEPAL USING A BOX MODELING FRAMEWORK

This paper discusses the application of a novel framework for the simulation of the seismic response of a school building in Sankhu, Nepal, which was damaged by the 2015 Gorkha earthquake. This framework uses a recently proposed methodology to estimate the backbone curve for every bay of the building. It then combines these curves to obtain the force-vs.-displacement response for every floor along two perpendicular horizontal directions, which is used to calibrate a box-type model of the building. The proposed methodology is validated with the data obtained by the authors from the instrumentation of the four-story school building during a reconnaissance a month after the earthquake. The comparison with the field data indicates that the proposed framework can simulate the seismic response of the actual structure, and capture their damage patterns and dynamic properties.