Abstract (EN):
The establishment of performance-based earthquake engineering in seismic codes is gradually turning the focus of the engineering community to the development of new seismic design approaches focusing on displacement control. Despite the well known limitations of traditional force-based design procedures embedded in current seismic design codes, there is still some margin for improvement before the new methods are fully established. The recently proposed Improved Force Based Design (IFBD) proved to yield significantly improved and optimized structural solutions when applied to steel moment-resisting frames. In this paper the effectiveness of the IFBD method is tested for a wide range of structural configurations in which several geometrical and design parameters are considered within a parametric study. Special attention is given to the capacity design procedure where some relevant observations are made with respect to the Eurocode 8 criteria. The seismic performance of the designed structures is assessed through non-linear static and time-history analyses. The results confirm the efficiency of the IFBD in achieving more economical structures and with more predictable behaviour.
Language:
English
Type (Professor's evaluation):
Scientific