Seismic Design of Very High Importance Buildings Regulations Using Standard 2800: Critical Review (Technical Note)

The performance of buildings designated as very high importance buildings (such as hospital buildings) according to Iranian Seismic Code (Standard 2800) is that; these buildings maintain their operational level in major seismic ground motions (design level earthquake) without major structural damage. This paper discuses the design requirements to reach the purposes in this code and shows that the code regulations can not provide the enough strength for the buildings to operate acceptable during sever earthquakes. To evaluate the code requirements, some R/C moment resistance frames with difference in stories numbers (designated according to standard 2800) was selected and their strength was evaluated based on Instruction for Seismic Rehabilitation of Existing Buildings (No. 360), by pushover analysis. The results indicate that the buildings designated as very high importance according to standard 2800, do not remain operationally after sever earthquake.