Life-cycle sustainability design of RC frames under the seismic loads

Abstract

Seismic design codes have minimal criteria and serviceability limits for the strength of structures against a selected earthquake hazard level, neglecting the structural performance during the lifetime. Life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) includes all the expected damage costs in the lifetime of buildings in terms of all-natural hazards such as the earthquake. In addition, to create an environment-friendly structure, environmental impacts of the entire life-cycle period should be identified and evaluated. Therefore, a novel approach for the sustainable design of reinforced concrete (RC) frames is defined in terms of the life-cycle cost components and societal effects associated with environmental impacts. Expected damage costs included the structural, non-structural, and social damage costs. Environmental impacts have been estimated based on the material consumption during the lifetime due to initial production and operation periods due to repair, and then these impacts were scored. Given the nonlinear behavior of the structure under earthquake excitation, simple response functions have been generated to reduce the analysis time. In this way, the number of nonlinear dynamic analyses which is time-consuming was reduced considerably. The proposed method was used for a RC frame to achieve optimally designed structures by introducing three objective functions. The results indicated that using the proposed methodology, sustainable RC frames were obtained with low computational costs.