Comparison of 1975, 1998 and 2007 Turkish Earthquake Codes on Selected RC Buildings

Throughout the years Turkey has encountered several disastrous earthquakes that had done major losses in lives and in the economy. The loss was huge and that brought the attention of Ministry of Public Works in Turkey to revise and update their design codes. Turkish Earthquake Codes have been updated and improved to meet the safety levels that are needed for this seismic area. In this thesis, the 1975, 1998, and 2007 Turkish Earthquake Codes are compared. Six different case studies were chosen and designed with different elevations; four case studies containing different type of irregularities while the other two are regular designs. The non-linear static pushover analysis method presented in TEC-2007 was chosen for evaluating and understanding how these buildings behave under a seismic activity. Moreover, the performance, the cost and the damage percentages of the buildings in respect to each of the 1975, 1998, and 2007 Turkish Earthquake Codes were conducted. Subsequently each case was investigated to find out the performance of each code in the event of an earthquake. The study has identified that the 1975 Turkish Earthquake Code is dangerous to follow in seismic activity areas due to most cases not meeting the safety criteria. While on the other hand, the 1998 and 2007 Turkish Earthquake Codes has been identified as safe to follow with minor differences. Keywords: Earthquake, Turkish Earthquake Code, non-linear static pushover, performance, cost, damage percentages.