Direct Displacement Based Seismic Design Compared with Force Based Design Approach

An important advancement in earthquake engineering has been the development of performance-based concepts for the seismic design of structures. Performance-based seismic design approaches overcome the shortcoming of the traditional force-based approach. The first step in the Direct Displacement-based Seismic Design (DDBSD) procedure is the definition of the target displacement that the building should not exceed under a given seismic hazard level. Indeed, the procedures require inelastic analysis. Direct Displacement-Based Seismic Design procedures appeared in recent seismic design codes (e.g., EC 8, etc.) in addition to the traditional forced-based approach. The design of several buildings via EC 8 Displacement Based approaches and traditional forced-based approaches will be discussed in this thesis. Low-Rise, mid-rise, and high-rise RC has been designed based on both approaches. Seismic Performance levels of the designed buildings have been re-evaluated via the nonlinear dynamic analysis procedure. The effect of design strategy on the performance and cost of each type of building have been compared. Building performance has slightly increased in terms of displacement. Furthermore, a considerable amount of improvements has been observed in plastic hinge formations. On the other hand, the cost difference between the two methods was acceptable.