Performance-based damage scenarios of fully equipped hospital critical rooms, taking into account structural, nonstructural, and content interactions

Abstract

There is still a gap between the structural and nonstructural components in the analysis and design stages of healthcare facilities, and as a result, earthquake-induced nonstructural damage is still causing loss of functionality despite minor structural damage. Aiming to bridge this gap, the present research focuses on the development of probabilistic damage scenarios for hospital critical rooms, taking into account the structural, nonstructural, and content interactions simultaneously. To achieve this goal, a fully equipped emergency room, intensive care unit, and operating room are simulated on the first, fourth, and fifth floors of a mid-rise hospital building and subjected to the service, design, and maximum considered earthquake levels under conventional and base-isolated support conditions. The building’s floor responses are then used as input motions to assess the performance and develop fragility curves for different nonstructural elements, systems, and contents located in each critical room. Finally, probabilistic damage scenarios are developed by coupling structural, nonstructural, and content fragility curves using the performance-based earthquake engineering methodology. Results showcase the benefits of base isolation not only in reducing damage but also in ensuring high levels of functionality for all earthquake hazard levels. Conversely, functionality loss is expected in conventional hospitals during low-intensity earthquake motions due to the considerable damage to medical equipment. Moreover, it was demonstrated that solely preventing structural damage is not enough to ensure hospital functionality. Finally, it is of paramount importance to develop code-based performance objectives and expectations for nonstructural components and medical equipment under low-and design-level earthquake motions.