Performance-Based Plastic Design and Energy-Based Evaluation of Seismic Resistant RC Moment Frame

This paper presents first time application of the Performance- Based Plastic Design (PBPD) approach to seismic resistant reinforced concrete special moment frames (RC SMF). Four baseline RC SMF (4, 8, 12 and 20-story) as used in the FEMA P695 were selected for this study. Those frames were redesigned by the PBPD approach. The baseline code designed frames and the PBPD frames were subjected to extensive inelastic pushover and time-history analyses. It turns out that the work-energy equation in PBPD to determine design base shear can also be used to estimate seismic demands, herein called the energy spectrum method. In summary, this study shows that the PBPD approach can be successfully applied for seismic design of RC structures as well. The seismic responses of the study frames met the targeted performance criteria with dramatic improvement over the corresponding baseline code designed frames. In addition, the drift demands of all study frames as computed by the energy spectrum method were in excellent agreement with those obtained from detailed inelastic dynamic analyses.