Upgrading existing buildings to meet modern seismic standards is one of the greatest challenges in structural engineering today. This case study highlights how a typical 1970s reinforced concrete hotel was transformed into a safe, resilient, and code-compliant structure—without compromising its functionality or architectural value.

From the onset of structural analysis, engineers have employed linear elastic methods, implicitly assuming small deformations, limited damage to structural members, and an approximately elastic response of all structural components.

From the onset of structural analysis, engineers have employed linear elastic methods, implicitly assuming small deformations, limited damage to structural members, and an approximately elastic response of all structural components.

In the context of seismic assessment and retrofit of existing reinforced concrete buildings, practitioners prefer to employ linear analysis and in particular the Linear Dynamic Procedure that uses the well-known Response Spectrum Analysis.

A significant earthquake, measuring M7.7, struck near Mandalay, Myanmar on March 28, 2025, at 06:20:54 UTC (12:50 local time). The event, designated as us7000pn9s by the USGS, occurred at [...]

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) recently released ASCE 41-23, an updated version of their standard for "Seismic Evaluation and Retrofit of Existing Buildings." This standard is a [...]

The current example employs a typical building built in the late 1980s. The building has 5 floors of approximately 180 m2 each, and a soft storey at the ground level. The infills of the upper levels are relatively strong with good quality ceramic bricks and mortar of relatively high strength. The combination of the soft ground storey and strong infill panels in upper floors is the most important characteristic of the building and constitutes a serious structural problem related to its seismic behaviour.

The current example employs a typical industrial building built in the late 1980s. The building has 2 floors of approximately 880m2 each. The infills are relatively strong with good quality ceramic bricks and mortar of relatively high strength.

The recent Turkey - Syria earthquake inspired us to write a blog post about the importance of seismic retrofit of existing buildings. The current example - case study - employs a typical building built in Southern Europe in the late 1980s. The building has 4 floors of approximately 200 m2 each, and a soft storey at the ground level.

SeismoSoft team passed the largest of the recordings to SeismoSignal and the findings were astonishing.

Steel bracing offers similar advantages to new shear walls, increasing the strength, the stiffness and the ductility of the building.

This method consists of the construction of new shear walls with large dimensions at selected locations in the building perimeter and/or in the interior of the building.

This post aims to present main aspects of seismic isolation in the strengthening of a reinforced concrete building, the available types of base isolation, as well as their advantages and disadvantages.

This post aims to present the available Fibre Reinforced Polymer (FRP) systems for the strengthening of a reinforced concrete building, the methods of their application, as well as their advantages and disadvantages.

This post aims to present the most common strengthening techniques for the strengthening of a reinforced concrete building. Before moving on to the presentation of the methods, some general points regarding the different retrofit techniques are put forward in the current section.

Concrete jacketing is probably the mostly used technique for the strengthening of RC members. It is constructed either with cast-in-place concrete or, more often, with shotcrete. The method involves the addition of a layer of reinforced concrete in the form of the jacket using longitudinal steel reinforcement and transverse steel ties outside the perimeter of the existing member.

The term ‘shotcrete’ refers to both the material and the construction method. The material is a concrete or a high-strength mortar, which is literally ‘shot’ into the forms. The method is the application of this material on site.