Simplified performance-based earthquake engineering

This study proposes a simplified approach to Performance-Based Design (PBD) and Performance-Based Assessment (PBA) of buildings subjected to earthquakes. The proposed approach incorporates three domains: Hazard Domain, Structural System Domain, and Loss Domain. In these domains the focus is on mean values of the ground motion intensity, building response, and losses. The objective of the PBD procedure is to assist engineers and decision makers to make informed decisions on global structural parameters and on the selection of an effective structural system and material based on several performance targets that are defined upfront. The PBD procedure is for implementation in conceptual design and should be followed by a performance assessment phase in which the building performance is evaluated either by the simplified mean-value-based PBA approach proposed in this dissertation or by considering all sources of uncertainty as is done in the rigorous PBA approach developed by other researchers of the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center.; The ease of the proposed PBD approach and its semi-graphical representation (denoted as Design Decision Support System, DDSS) will provide engineers with insight into the contribution of different building subsystems to the building total loss. A byproduct of this PBD process is that it can be used as simplified PBA process by only changing the flow of information. Special consideration is given to design for collapse safety. A method is developed for incorporating different sources of uncertainty (aleatory and epistemic) in the proposed PBD approach for collapse safety. The effectiveness of the proposed PBD and PBA procedures is illustrated through several examples.; The DDSS proposed in this study is supported by a comprehensive database of structural response parameters obtained from extensive incremental dynamic analyses of generic frame and wall structural systems for a wide-range of combinations of structural parameters. Using this database, the sensitivity of important building response parameters to variations of structural properties is studied. Closed-form equations for the collapse capacity (in terms of median and dispersion of collapse fragility curves) of moment-resisting frame and shear wall structures are developed to assist in the conceptual design decision process.