Uncertainties Influencing the Collapse Capacity of Steel Moment-Resisting Frames

Abstract

Abstract In order to exactly evaluate the seismic collapse capacity of a structure, probabilistic approach is required by considering uncertainties related to its structural properties and ground motion. Regardless of the types of uncertainties, they influence on the seismic response of a structures and their effects are required to be estimated. An incremental dynamic analysis(IDA) is useful to investigate uncertainty-propagation due to ground motion. In this study, a 3-story steel moment-resisting frame is selected for a prototype frame and analyzed using the IDA. The uncertainty-propagation is assessed with categorized parameters representing epistemic uncertainties, such as the seismic weight, the inherent damping, the yield strength, and the elastic modulus. To do this, the influence of the uncertainty-propagation to the seismic collapse capacity of the prototype frame is probabilistically evaluated using the incremental dynamic analyses based on the Monte-Carlo simulation sampling with the Latin hypercube method. Of various parameters related to epistemic uncertainty-propagation, the inherent damping is investigated to be the most influential parameter on the seismic collapse capacity of the prototype frame.