13 th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering Vancouver, B.C., Canada August 1-6, 2004 Paper No. 2447 EARTHQUAKE-RESISTANT PERFORMANCE OF PERUVIAN SCHOOL BUILDINGS Alejandro MUÑOZ 1 , Marcial BLONDET 2 , Ursula QUINTANA 3 , Henry LEON 3 SUMMARY All recent Peruvian earthquakes have caused considerable damage in the educational infrastructure built before 1997. School buildings designed and constructed according to the 1997 Peruvian Seismic Code, however, were essentially undamaged during the Atico M w 8.4 earthquake of 2001. This paper presents the seismic performance of Peruvian school buildings subjected to three levels of earthquake hazard. Analysis is performed via spectral procedures and performance is evaluated according to the location of demand points in the corresponding capacity curves. Results show that traditional buildings (pre-1997) would have large inelastic demands in frequent events and could collapse in larger events. It is expected, however, that modern buildings would have adequate performance even in extreme events. The radical improvement in the expected and observed performance of modern school buildings is due to the increase in the stiffness demands of the 1997 code. INTRODUCTION The Peruvian seismic design code of 1997, (SENCICO [1]) maintains the strength requirements of the previous 1977 code [2] but significantly increases the stiffness demands. This implies that school buildings, which traditionally had been flexible in one direction, had to be more robust after 1997. Whereas modern school buildings had excellent performance during the June 2001 earthquake, traditional school buildings suffered extensive damage. This motivated a comparative assessment of the seismic performance of new and traditional school buildings, together with a brief analysis of the influence of the new Code requirements on the good performance of the modern school buildings. 1 Professor, Catholic University of Peru, Department of Engineering. Email: amunoz@pucp.edu.pe 2 Professor, Catholic University of Peru, Department of Engineering. Email: mblondet@pucp.edu.pe 3 Student of Civil Engineering, Catholic University of Peru.