The 2016 Gyeongju and 2017 Pohang earthquakes served as a stark reminder of the seismic vulnerability of South Korea's existing building stock, particularly its unreinforced masonry (URM) structures. As a predominant typology for low-rise buildings, U...
The 2016 Gyeongju and 2017 Pohang earthquakes served as a stark reminder of the seismic vulnerability of South Korea's existing building stock, particularly its unreinforced masonry (URM) structures. As a predominant typology for low-rise buildings, URM structures are characterized by their stacked-unit construction, which offers inherently limited resistance to lateral forces. This vulnerability is critically compounded by the fact that a vast majority of these buildings were constructed without modern seismic design codes and now face material degradation from aging.
To mitigate this seismic risk, South Korea's national disaster management framework relies on fragility functions to quantitatively assess potential earthquake damage. However, existing fragility models for URM buildings have largely been derived from simplified macro-element models that fail to accurately capture the complex, nonlinear behavior and progressive failure mechanisms inherent to masonry, such as joint sliding and tension cracking.
To address these limitations, this study presents a refined analytical approach using the Applied Element Method (AEM), implemented via the Extreme Loading for Structures (ELS) software. AEM is particularly well-suited for this purpose as it models brick units as rigid bodies connected by nonlinear springs, effectively capturing the joint-driven failure modes typical of masonry. This method offers a more accurate simulation of complex nonlinear behavior and collapse mechanisms compared to conventional methods. To ensure the reliability of this numerical approach, the analysis model was first rigorously validated against existing experimental data from material-level (prism) and component-level (wall) tests. This crucial step confirmed the model's ability to accurately reproduce the capacity curves and failure modes of masonry components.
To ensure the analysis is representative of the domestic building inventory, 42 prototype URM models were established based on a review of typical design practices in Korea. Nonlinear static analyses were conducted on these models to derive seismic capacity curves. From these results, the building's capacity at the 'Life Safety' (LS) limit state was defined. Based on this, a new, singular seismic fragility function based on effective Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) is proposed.
The validity of the newly proposed AEM-based fragility function was confirmed through comparison with the fragility curves of previous studies. In particular, the results were similar to the existing "Slight (S)" level curve, whose validity was confirmed through damage verification in the Pohang earthquake. This confirms the ability to conservatively yet reliably assess the vulnerability of actual structures. This AEM-based fragility function was used to assess the current seismic vulnerability of unreinforced masonry buildings in Korea and to estimate the expected damage extent in key areas under the Design Base Earthquake (DBE) and Maximum Considered Earthquake (MCE) scenarios. The results of this study provide a reliable tool based on physical behavior, enabling more sophisticated seismic risk assessment than previously possible. The proposed fragility function quantitatively confirms the urgency of reinforcing policies for the most vulnerable structures in Korea.