Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Asian Journal of Civil Engineering https://doi.org/10.1007/s42107-020-00311-6 ORIGINAL PAPER Seismic vulnerability assessment of reinforced concrete school building in Nepal Narayan Ghimire 1  · Hemchandra Chaulagain 2 Received: 7 May 2020 / Accepted: 28 September 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Abstract The school building built with reinforced concrete in Nepal confront high seismic risk during past seismic events. The vast extent structural damage and loss of human life’s and property was due to the poor enforcement of the standards, lack of ductile detailing and poor construction materials and practices in Nepal. The efect of earthquake excitation on buildings was ignored after the latest earthquake in 2015. Most of the school structures were used in full-fedged without performing any seismic evaluation. Seeing these situations, especially in Nepal, a vulnerability assessment of such school structures is essential. The seismic risk owing to future earthquake can be minimize by proper vulnerability assessment of the school structures. To this end, the purpose of the study is to evaluate seismic performance of school structure through both vulner- ability and fragility assessment. The main research issues are explored through analytical method. For this, structural response parameters are analytically studied through linear and non-linear analyses by fnite element program-based software. In dynamic analysis, numerical building models were subjected to three synthetic earthquakes Gorkha, El-Centro and Kobe. The fragility function of case study building structure was plotted with the probability of failure at every 0.1 g interval of PGA, which provided technical base for seismic vulnerability assessment of school buildings. The result indicates that the selected school building is found to be vulnerable compared with the standard international guidelines. The results of this study are more useful for diferent governmental authorities, emergency response organization who are directly involved for proper planning and implementation. Keywords Seismic vulnerability · School building · Fragility function · Vulnerability curve · Non-linear analysis Introduction Nepal is centrally located in a seismically active Hind-Kush Himalaya region which has a long past history of devastating earthquake. The major seismic events have been occurred in the years of 1255, 1408, 1505, 1803, 1810, 1833, 1934, 1988 and 2015 AD (Pandey et al. 1995). The geological location of Indian and Tibetan tectonic plates results to cause large earthquakes in the entire Himalayan region (Khattri 1987). Similarly, as indicated in Fig. 1, Nepal and adjoining Hima- layan arc has experienced large historical earthquakes: some of them are 1897 Shillong earthquake (8M w ), 1905 Kangara earthquake (7.8M s ), 1934 Bihar-Nepal earthquake (8M w ) and 1950 Assam earthquake (8.6M w ) (Gupta & Gahalaut 2014). These all evidences are the indicator for the possibil- ity of future earthquakes in the entire Himalayan region. Among the recorded past history of major earthquake in Nepal, the 1934 Bihar-Nepal earthquake magnitude around 8 (Mw), with maximum intensity of X (MMI), stocked eastern half of Nepal and killed more than 8,500 people and heavy damaged buildings (Rana 1934). In 1988, the Udayapur earthquake in Nepal of magnitude 6.6 (Mw) damaged more than 60,000 buildings and approximately 721 people died and injured thousands of people (Thapa 1988). The latest 2015 Gorkha earthquake caused around 9,000 casualties, 20,000 injuries and destroyed 500,000 buildings structures in Nepal (Chaulagain 2018). Past stud- ies had shown that damaged building and consequently loss of life and economic property due to earthquake are related * Hemchandra Chaulagain hchaulagain@gmail.com 1 Master of Science in Structural Engineering, School of Engineering, Pokhara University, Pokhara-30, Kaski, Nepal 2 School of Engineering, Pokhara University, Pokhara-30, Kaski, Nepal