Seismic Evaluation and Retrofit Design of an Airport Passenger Terminal Building

This paper presents the seismic evaluation and retrofit design of an airport passenger terminal building, which was constructed in 1981. The main objective of the work was to evaluate and enhance the structural performance of the building to satisfy the “collapse prevention” structural performance level under the strong earthquake events, which are probable to occur rarely in the remaining lifetime of the building. The seismic retrofit design was carried out to enhance the structural performance, minimizing the potential of collapse during the strong earthquake events. As the 32-year old passenger terminal building has a relatively shorter remaining life, compared to a new building, it was decided to carry out seismic evaluation against the earthquake with the return period of 1,146 years (approximately 4% of probability of exceedence in 50 years), as opposed to new buildings that are typically evaluated for 2,475-year return period earthquake (2% of probability of exceedence in 50 years).