We are delighted to announce a successful PhD proposal by Romano Jevtić Rundek on 15.4.2025, with title of the PhD thesis selected as “Detailed analysis of a typical large panel building failure mechanism under seismic loading“. The propoused research aims to improve out understanding of seismic behavior of Large Panel Buildings and develop a modern methodology for their seismic assessment.
The PhD proposal Abstract in full:
Construction of standardised large panel buildings intensified during 1950s and 1960s, with multiple such buildings constructed in Zagreb. As most of them were built prior to 1964, before the first seismic norms in Croatia, their seismic response was not analysed and their seismic resistance is unknown. These buildings are in residential use to this day. Considering their structural details are not up to modern standards, these buildings can exhibit complex and potentially dangerous failure mechanisms. In this thesis numerical models for analysis of large panel buildings are developed, with a focus on response of structural details. Behaviour models of details are then incorporated into a global numerical model made in ETABS for dynamic time history analysis. The result of these analyses are fragility curves and relevant failure mechanisms, based on which a target retrofit methodology is developed for this type of large panel buildings.
