Civil Engineering Faculty of ETH Zurich, Switzerland - Structural Assessment for Earthquake

The paper reports on the structural safety assessment for earthquake loading of the Civil Engineering Faculty of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. In the assessment, the methodology of the technical bulletin SIA 2018 – recently published by the Swiss Association of Engineers and Architects (SIA) – is applied. This bulletin introduces so-called performance-based approaches in the Swiss code provisions and allows the application of these displacement-based design methods in the assessment of an existing building under earthquake loading. In order to reach economically feasible recommendations for risk-reduction measures, the technical bulletin also allows the investigation of the commensurability and the reasonableness of such measures. The main features of the bulletin SIA 2018 are described and the different stages of an assessment are illustrated by the example of the investigations on the structure of the Civil Engineering Faculty of ETH Zurich. The results of the assessment as well as recommendations on risk-reduction measures are presented. Conclusions on the assessment of existing structures under earthquake loading are drawn.