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The main objective of this present work is to estimate the seismic fragility of typical existing buildings in the north part of Algeria, in which we evaluate the performance, the seismic vulnerability and the damage of reinforced concrete frame structures and URM masonry buildings, existing in dominant way in the city of Algiers (Algeria). An analytical procedure for the derivation of fragility curves is proposed. The capacity spectrum method and seismic damage potential for the city, starting from capacity and fragility curves, are then discussed. Different tools regarding the determination of capacity curves of different existing structural systems by using a non-linear structural analysis are implemented and explained. Four damage states are defined for both structural systems. The earthquake action is expressed in terms of spectral values and the seismic quality of the buildings; the probabilities of the damage states are obtained considering a lognormal probability distribution. An ADRS format has been used for the studied area where a significant damage is obtained for mid-rise and high-rise masonry buildings.

International audience; The purpose of this article is to analyse the results of a survey towards the architects and engineers of construction in order to estimate the perception of the anti-seismic protection amongst these professionals. It focuses more on the architects who design buildings and, in many cases, monitor their implementation. The main result is the observation of inadequacies and gaps in seismic culture amongst the professionals, especially architects. These difficulties require the reinforcement of earthquake-resistant training. This effort to upgrade skills is as important as other aspects of the preventive management of the seismic risk in Algeria.

The estimation of losses resulting from an earthquake requires that for each building class, the relationship between the intensity of ground shaking and damage degree must be known or developed. Potential earthquake damage to structures, human beings and personal property have been the scope of numerous studies. Different approaches have been employed so far to estimate earthquake casualties and damage. This paper describe the basic concept for development of analytical vulnerability functions based essentially on so called damage model which was performed from probabilistic studies on seismic capacity of existing buildings in the city of Algiers (Algeria). Regarding the developed model for assessing the seismic damage, vulnerability functions of specific losses (potential losses for a specific urban area in terms of meter square area of building slabs which may involve causalities) were developed in order to predict the expected seismic risk for a given ground motion scenario.

Shaking tables are devices for testing structures or structural components models with a wide range of synthetic ground motions or real recorded earthquakes. They are essential tools in earthquake engineering research since they simulate the effects of the true inertial forces on the test specimens. The destructive earthquakes that occurred at the north part of Algeria during the period of 1954-2003 resulted in an initiative from the Algerian authorities for the construction of a shaking simulator at the National Earthquake Engineering Research Center, CGS. The acceleration tracking performance and specifically the inability of the earthquake simulator to accurately replicate the input signal can be considered as the main challenge during shaking table test. The objective of this study is to validate the uni-axial sinusoidal performances curves and to assess the accuracy and fidelity in signal reproduction using the advanced adaptive control techniques incorporated into the MTS Digital controller and software of the CGS shaking table. A set of shake table tests using harmonic and earthquake acceleration records as reference/commanded signals were performed for four test configurations: bare table, 60 t rigid mass and two 20 t elastic specimens with natural frequencies of 5 Hz and 10 Hz.

Servohydraulic shaking tables are being increasingly used in the field of earthquake engineering. They play a critical role in the advancement of the research state and remain one of the valuable tools for seismic testing. Recently, the National Earthquake Engineering Research Center, CGS, has acquired a 6.1m x 6.1 m shaking table system which has a six degree-of-freedom testing capability. The maximum specimen mass that can be tested on the shaking table is 60 t. This facility is designed specially for testing a complete civil engineering structures, substructures and structural elements up to collapse or ultimate limit states. It can also be used for qualification testing of industrial equipments. The current paper presents the main findings of the experimental shake-down characterization testing of the CGS shaking table. The test program carried out in this study included random white noise and harmonic tests. These tests were performed along each of the six degrees of freedom, three translations and three rotations. This investigation provides fundamental parameters that are required and essential while elaborating a realistic model of the CGS shaking table. Also presented in this paper, is the numerical model of the shaking table that was established and validated.

This paper attempts to present the Algerian system in education, research and practice. The Algerian higher education system is constituted of 91 institutions spread over the 48 provinces covering the entire country. This system consists of forty seven (47) state owned universities, ten (10) university centers and nineteen (19) Higher education national schools and five (05) teacher training colleges, ten (10) preparatory schools and two (02) integrated preparatory classes where more than two million students are following their education and research. In terms of education, since 2006, the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific research adopted the Bologna process which organized the higher education in what is called License/Master/Doctorate with an aim to make Algerian Higher Education more compatible and comparable, more competitive and more attractive for Algerians and for students and scholars from other countries. There are more than six hundreds (600) research laboratories within the higher education institutions fully support by the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research.

This study highlights the major contributing factors to the observed damage distribution in the city of Boumerdès after the 2003 Algeria earthquake. The results of field investigations and statistical analyses show that a majority of the damaged buildings, mostly mid-rise reinforced concrete (RC) moment-frame systems, were located on steep slopes and small hilltops, along river valleys. The horizontal-to-vertical (H/V) ratios from free-field microtremor measurements at these sites did not show clear results. In contrast, buildings with the same structural characteristics located on flat ground did not suffer much damage, and clear peaks were observed from the H/V ratio curves. The amplification effects of topography have not been incorporated into the revised Algerian seismic code, but the results from this study show the importance of considering this factor when designing new buildings for earthquake resistance.

The aim of this study is the comparison between the fundamental periods identified experimentally and those calculated using the formulas given in the Algerian Seismic Code (RPA 99) for vulnerability assessment and for experimental data collection of selected sample of old buildings. The results obtained for vulnerability assessment will then be extrapolated to buildings of the same typology built during the 1949 to 1954 period in the northern part of Algeria. From 1949 to 1954, the reinforced concrete constructions in Algeria were built before the first generation of the Algerian Seismic Code. These buildings being old are certainly weakened by the occupancy activities and seismic event loads. Hence, the evaluation of their vulnerability with respect to the regional seismic hazard requires the knowledge of their structure on a site capacity. The empirical formulas to calculate the fundamental period of a building are based on the Algerian Earthquake Code (RPA 99) .These formulas consider only the geometrical dimension (length, width and height) and the structural design of the buildings. The fundamental periods of vibration of twenty-two buildings, located in Algiers, calculated using the empirical formulas given in the RPA 99 are lower than those identified experimentally. A question then rises, do these tested buildings present any damage or not? As five of these buildings were tested before the 21 May 2003 earthquake, the experimental testing highlighted a decrease in the fundamental frequency which means that these buildings are damaged. Hence, for vulnerability assessment, the empirical formulas given in the Algerian Seismic Code (RPA 99) may not be appropriate for vulnerability assessment of the old buildings built during the 1949 to 1954 period.

This paper illustrates the results of a seismic vulnerability study aimed to derive the fragility curves for typical Algerian reinforced concrete bridge piers using an analytical approach. Fragility curves express the probability of exceeding a certain damage state for a given ground motion intensity (e.g., PGA). In this respect, a set of 41 worldwide accelerometer records from which, 21 Algerian strong motion records are included, have been used in a non-linear dynamic response analyses to assess the damage indices expressed in terms of the bridge displacement ductility, the ultimate ductility, the cyclic loading factor and the cumulative energy ductility. Combining the damage indices defined for 5 damage rank with the ground motion indices, the fragility curves for the bridge piers were derived assuming a lognormal distribution.