A robust approach for seismic damage assessment

We present a robust approach based on a convex analysis to take into account uncertainties appearing in evaluations of damage to structures during an earthquake. Two kinds of uncertainties are introduced: on the excitation and on the structure. The results obtained by the convex analysis are compared with a Monte Carlo simulation to evaluate the conservatism of the method. The analysis is applied to a reinforced concrete shear wall which is modeled as a single degree of freedom system. The non-linearity of the structure is taken into account by an uncertainty on a linearized system. An extension to multi-degrees of freedom systems is presented to allow the treatment of more complex structures, with an application to portal frames. The results of this analysis consist in an evaluation of the maximum possible damage of the structure according to the uncertainties taken into account.