Prescriptive Approach to the Performance-Based Seismic Design of Low-Rise Wood-Frame Residential Buildings

Abstract

Performance-based seismic design (PBSD) is considered by many to be the next generation of design philosophy that focuses on the system performance of a structure during earthquake loading. For steel and concrete structures, this design philosophy is being used by a select group of practitioners. However, application to wood-frame buildings is still in the research stages; several approaches for PBSD are proposed with rehabilitation concepts available in ASCE 41. Currently, most of the PBSD methods for wood-frame buildings require designers to utilize a level of approach that is far more detailed than current design approaches. This increases the cost of any engineering for the design of wood-frame buildings. Therefore, in this study, a simplified design approach is developed that allows a designer to employ the PBSD methodology without complex analysis. Different from most existing PBSD procedures, this prescriptive approach was developed based on a significant number of numerical simulations using a sim...