Assessing seismic performance of code-compliant steel special moment frames using ASCE 41-17

Abstract

ASCE 41 standard, increasingly used by practitioners, is a desirable tool to evaluate the seismic performance of different types of structures according to the Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering framework. The latest edition of this standard (ASCE 41-17) has undergone significant changes with respect to its previous versions, which could substantially affect the results of structural performance evaluation. Within this context, the present study performs a comprehensive quantitative investigation of the seismic performance of steel structures based on the component-level Tier 3 systematic evaluation procedure of ASCE 41-17, using both nonlinear static (conventional and enhanced pushover analyses) and dynamic analyses. The evaluation is conducted on six ASCE 7 code-compliant steel special moment frames considering different heights (i.e., 6, 12, and 18 stories) and two versions of the seismic design code (i.e., ASCE 7-10 and -16). The results of the nonlinear dynamic procedure demonstrate that both the ASCE 7-10 and -16 designed buildings satisfy the acceptance criteria of ASCE 41-17. It is also shown that the linear dynamic procedure recommended by ASCE 41-17 to supplement the results of the nonlinear static procedure for buildings with significant higher modes effect cannot provide an accurate estimation of the structural performance compared to enhanced pushover procedures. Additionally, the comparison of the structural performance evaluation between the ASCE 41-13 and -17 indicated that the previous edition of this code (ASCE 41-13) is overly conservative for columns compared to ASCE 41-17. Finally, the applicability of using the modeling parameters recommended by ASCE 41 for simulating the elements’ behavior in case of the lack of sufficient available experimental data is demonstrated.