Strengthening Methods of the Existing Reinforced Concrete School Buildings in Medina, Saudi Arabia

Nowadays, evaluation of the seismic performance of existing buildings has received great attention. This paper was carried out to study the effect of strengthening the existing reinforced concrete (RC) school buildings in Medina, Saudi Arabia through assessing the seismic performance and retrofitting where seismic analysis and design were done using equivalent static analysis method according to Saudi Building Code (SBC 301) and SAP2000 software.

A Typical five-story RC school building designed according to the SBC301 has been investigated in a comparative study to determine the suitable strengthening methods such as RC shear walls and steel X-bracing methods. The results revealed that the current design of RC school buildings located in Medina was unsafe, inadequate, and unsatisfied to mitigate seismic loads. Moreover, adding steel X-bracing and RC shear walls represent a suitable strategy to reduce their seismic vulnerability.