Feasibility of Nonlinear Analysis for Seismic Design of RC Special Moment Frames

The seismic design of buildings in approximately all common seismic design codes is based on the equivalent static force procedure this procedure has failed to provide insight into how the building behaves during earthquakes. The nonlinear analyses in performance-based design procedure provide the tools for calculating structural response beyond the elastic limit. Hence, nonlinear analysis has an important role in the design of existing and new buildings. In this study, a performance-based procedure for the seismic design of reinforced concrete (RC) special moment frames is presented. The proposed method includes nonlinear static analysis in accordance with appendix 2 of BHRC and nonlinear dynamic analysis in accordance with chapter 16 of FEMA P-2082-1. The proposed method has been systematically applied to the design of a regular multistory 3-dimensional (3D) RC special moment frame then; its seismic performance has been compared with that of a similar frame designed according to BHRC under an ensemble of 22 near-fault and far-fault ground motions. The results show that the proposed method can better achieve the optimal strength distribution pattern over conventional method. Buildings designed with the proposed method showed better seismic performance than those designed according to the standard code. In addition, this method has been shown to be more economical than conventional design methods.