Optimal drift performance design of base isolated buildings subject to earthquake loads

The control of drift performance is one of the most challenging and difficult tasks in building design. Although optimization of structures under earthquake loads has been ongoing for the past few decades, there is still no effective method for optimising buildings subject to seismic drift performance criteria. Much of the past research studies on the design optimization of base isolated structures were focused either on the superstructure or the base isolated system. This paper presents an effective optimization technique for seismic drift performance design of base isolated buildings under earthquake loads. Both the superstructure and the base isolation, as a whole, will be considered simultaneously. Attempts have been made to automate the drift design of concrete structure systems with and without base isolation using optimization techniques.