Pushover experiment and analysis of a full scale non-seismically detailed RC structure

► Full-scale pushover experiment on a four storey RC structure is presented. ► Experiment conducted as round robin exercise. ► Failure modes and vulnerability of non-conforming structures reported. ► Numerical procedure and assumptions for realistic prediction is presented. ► Pushover analysis considering only flexural failures not sufficient. The paper presents experimental and numerical work carried out on a full-scale four storey reinforced concrete (RC) structure for seismic assessment by pushover method. For practicality, a portion of an existing structure having certain eccentricities was replicated for the experimental setup. The structure was detailed as per non-seismic reinforcement detailing norms of Indian Standards. The experiment was carried out as a round robin exercise, in which various institutes in India participated and presented pre-test results in the form of pushover curves. A large variation in the pre-test results highlighted that the result of a pushover analysis is highly sensitive to the adopted modeling techniques. This paper reports the details and results of the experiment and focuses on the need of modeling various structural nonlinearities to obtain realistic results. The results of pre-test analysis by various research groups, in which the emphasis was given on modeling issues as well as a more efficient post-test numerical procedure is also presented and compared. It is shown that a basic pushover analysis considering only flexural failures may not be able to achieve a realistic simulation, thus it is mandatory to develop relatively simple, yet effective models to consider more complex phenomena such as joint shear failures, to achieve realistic predictions.