Seismic retrofitting of IBS wall connections with FRP composites

In the last two decade, Industrialized Building System (IBS) was promoted to enhance the importance of prefabrication technology rather than conventional method in construction. The components of IBS structure are floors, walls, columns, beams, and roofs which are assembled and erected on the site properly joined to form the final units. Among all the components, connection has the most influential role to join all elements together such as wall to wall, slab to wall and wall to foundation for transferring the earthquake lateral loads. In the present study, an efficient FRP retrofit scheme for IBS wall connection has been developed in order to provide adequate strength and stiffness for wall connection to be resisting against the lateral seismic load. For this purpose, the inter-storey deformations of FRP strengthened infill walls which are integrated to the boundary frame members is evaluated by numerical analysis. So, the analytical model of wall and connection is developed and FRP retrofit design and analysis for actual deficient RC wall subjected to huge ground motion is conducted. From the analysis result, it was observed that application of the FRP composite retrofit scheme reduced the damage induced to deficient wall by controlling story deformations. So in this case, it is possible to satisfy the collapse prevention performance state through an efficient and economical manner.