An investigation of defective reinforced concrete construction retrofitted with buckling restrained braces via structurel identification techniques

Considered its geographical location, our country is observed to be located in an active earthquake zone, 96% of its acreage lies in the earthquake zone, 98% of its population lives in the earthquake zone and has been exposed to large-scale earthquakes for very short periods of time. A large loss of life and property occurs due to both defect in design, low quality of the materials used and poor workmanship. The bad building stock in our country has become seriously threatening to the safety of life and property and social and economic life of people. There are two different solutions to eliminate this threat. The first way is to demolish and rebuild the structures. The second way is to strengthen the existing ones. When we investigate the new generation strengthening methods, the Buckling Restrained Braces (BRBs) used as horizontal load-bearing elements with high axial stiffness draw attention. BRBs exhibit similar behavior when exposed to tensile and compression forces. This positively affects the behavior of the structure, which BRBs are applied to, under dynamic loads. Health monitoring techniques allow to characterize the dynamic and structural features of reinforced concrete-frame structures reinforced with BRBs and to assess the value of the damage before, after reinforcement and after the effects of earthquake-like forces. This thesis was carried out by Assoc. Prof. Ramazan Özçelik within the scope of the TÜBİTAK project number 116M231. In this thesis, the structural status of the reinforced concrete structures, retrofitted with two three-dimensional two-storey 3x1-span ½ scale BRBs, in various stages and damage assessment after the experiment was investigated and compared with the health monitoring method in the light of the acceleration data measured from various parts of the structure. The reinforced concrete structures in point have been tested with dynamic-like test method contained structural defects observed especially in the structures dates back to the years before 2000.