Structural design for earthquakes

When a strong earthquake hits a city the buildings are supposed not to collapse. However, only
very solid structures, for example structures for nuclear reactors, can experience a strong
earthquake without significant damage. For most buildings we need to accept severe damaged.
Probably they need to be demolished and rebuild. However, the people inside will have survived.
The method for designing these buildings is shortly explained in this text. Often it is called
performance based design1. Key is to absorb energy in components that are not essential for the
carrying capacity. The energy is absorbed in plastic deformation of the beam-column connections.
The ductility factor is defined as

total
.
elastic

A typical value for steel sections is = 25.

A typical value for a reinforced concrete section
is = 10.

Mp

elastic

total

1. Enter the idealisation of the structure in a program for dynamic plastic frame analysis. Examples
of such programs are Drain2D, Ruaumoko.
Choose structural dimensions such that during an earthquake yielding will occur in the beamcolumn connections and not in the columns. Use a large material strength to calculate the beam
capacity and a small material strength to calculate the column capacity.
Select elastic plastic material behaviour for the beam-column joints. Select linear-elastic
behaviour for all beam and column elements.
Select several earthquake accelerograms that agree with the geological conditions of the building
location. Scale the accelerograms such that the peak value corresponds to the earthquake
intensity that is considered, for example the 1 in 1000 years earthquake.
Select structural damping; recommended is Rayleigh damping of 5% for the first and second
natural mode.
Set the time step.
2. Run the dynamic plastic analysis. Run the analysis again with half the time step. If little changed
in the results the time step was OK. Check the column moments; they should be less than the
moment capacity. Obtain the required ductilities for the beam-column joints.
3. Design beam-column joints that have the selected strength (not more) and the required ductility
(or more). If not successful continue from point 1 with better choices for the dimensions and
plastic moments. A few design iterations may be necessary.
It is important to design a structure for several similar earthquakes because a structure might be
very good in resisting one particular earthquake but collapse during another.
Dynamic plastic frame analysis is not only used for strong earthquakes (1 in 1000 years). Also for
small earthquakes (1 in 20 years) it is useful to predict the damage and repair costs. Building
owners and insurance companies need to know this for their financial choices.

The name performance based design refers to simulating the realistic structural behaviour and
comparing this to performance requirements. It is very different from older methods for seismic
design that can be summarised as code requirements that gave a result that was deemed to
satisfy.