A new approach on the strengthening of primary school buildings in Turkey: An application of external shear wall

Considerable life and property losses have occurred because of the devastation due to the earthquakes happened in Turkey during the last 10 years. Especially, the damages that occurred on the public buildings were more serious and irrevocable when compared with the damages that took place on private buildings. In Turkey, primary school buildings constitute a large portion of the public buildings. Unfortunately, these buildings faced with heavy damages during the last earthquakes. The strengthening of existing primary school buildings in accordance with new contract specifications, thereby reducing losses of life and property to a minimum in case of an earthquake, has become one of the important issues on the agenda of the Turkish government. However, the strengthening of the primary school buildings by using the available methods is so difficult, because the strengthening works take a long time, the user of these buildings are obliged to evacuate the buildings and also there occurs extra costs caused by the additional repairs and renovations within the buildings when these methods are used. In this study, a new strengthening type of reinforced concrete buildings namely “external reinforced concrete shear wall” application method is discussed. For this purpose, three typical projects, which have been built commonly, are mentioned. The structural deficiencies observed in these buildings are given. In the experimental stage of this study, an experimental programme is formed in order to evaluate the performance of the external shear wall application. In the experimental schedule, four reinforced concrete test specimens are produced by using the design and detailing data of the considered school buildings. According to these tests, the strengthening and system improvement performed through adding external reinforced concrete shear wall to the reinforced concrete buildings will add improved behaviour, strength and rigidity to the system with its low cost besides the ease of construction and application. Since these buildings are detached and located in a multi-purpose garden, constructed as typical projects and have special architectural layout, developing this method for the existing primary school buildings will be able to be implemented in most of the primary school buildings without any problems.