A Study on the Seismic Behavior of the Concrete Panel Buildings

Panel construction has played an important role in building construction in recent decades. These buildings are different from the conventional frame structures because of lack of usual beam and column elements. It seems that structural engineers have reservations in using these construction systems, due to some ambiguities in the seismic behavior and specially in choosing the proper value for the seismic response modification factor. Study of this factor in panel buildings dealt with in this paper by investigation on three different panel structures with similar plan layouts and different heights. PERFORM-3D software is employed to model the nonlinear behavior of these structures with the capability of finite element analysis by making use of the multilayer fiber section shell elements. Doing so, the response modification factors are calculated and discussed. According to the drawn conclusions, it seems that there exist a considerable difference between the obtained results and the values suggested by the related standards, which implies a need for revision due to apparently excess conservatism.