Performance Based Seismic Design of Steel Structure Using Non-Linear Dynamic Analysis

Abstract

Abstract In the recent decades, it was observed that the performance of buildings that were designed using the traditional building codes were not satisfactory under seismic effects. There was increased demand for buildings that would not only provide life safety under the design earthquake and prevent collapse under major earthquakes, but also include other performance objectives such as the time taken for the building to be occupied post-earthquake, cost of repair and so on. This resulted in the research and development of a performance based seismic design that would incorporate these demands in the design. This study presents a performance based seismic design of a 5-storey steel special moment resisting frame building by using non-linear dynamic analysis to meet multiple performance objectives. The seismic performance was evaluated based on the confidence level, which indicates the ability of the building to meet the target performance objective, determined for the inter-storey drift parameter, using the guidelines given in FEMA-350. The results show that the designed building satisfies the minimum confidence level requirement for each performance objective. The study concludes that performance based seismic design proves to be a reliable method for design of buildings that provide enhanced seismic performance.