Three-Stage Multiscale Nonlinear Dynamic Analysis Platform for Building-Level Loss Estimation

Large-scale loss estimation needs vulnerability functions that relate ground motion to repair cost for each of many building classes. A challenge to generating analytical vulnerability functions for a building class is that one needs to reflect seismic performance at several scales, from the size of cracks to the whole building. Here, we propose a three-stage multiscale platform tackling a general reinforced concrete (RC) building containing complex walls: (1) at the micro level, a microphysical mechanism-based parallel finite element analysis (FEA) engine captures microscopic nonlinearities; (2) the macro level handles computationally expensive dynamic analyses of buildings; (3) the meso level manages interscale information transfer and describes floor-specific variability. Multiple parallel FEA engines run in concert with a stand-alone dynamic analysis platform. Importantly, the micro level resolves damage phenomena explicitly—no fragility inference is required—propagating component damage to global dynamic analysis. Now, one can link microscopic damage to building seismic loss.