Publication
Seismic assessment of existing buildings is a very important area of research to predict the impact of an earthquake on an area. Over the years, unreinforced masonry buildings have shown to be highly vulnerable to seismic risk. Although Switzerland is considered a low to moderate seismic zone, studies have shown that seismic risk is the country's most significant natural risk. This is mainly due to the fact that the majority of the Swiss real estate stock was built with little or no seismic consideration. This thesis focuses mainly on a typical typology of Lausanne buildings. First, an inventory was taken of buildings with characteristics common to this typology. Five prototypes of buildings most representative of this type of construction were then created. In a second step, a detailed seismic analysis was carried out, in particular using the Extreme Loading for Structures (ELS) software, which uses the applied element method. Finally, fragility curves for each of the prototypes were derived, linking the structure's capacity according to spectral acceleration.