Seismic Design of Steel Buildings

An approach for the ultimate limit state design of steel buildings against the credible severest earthquake is presented on the basis of energy concept. The safety of a structure is judged by comparing structure’s energy dissipating capacity with earthquake input energy to the structure. A general safety criterion is first developed for a simple elasto-plastic shear-type system, and then a procedure is discussed in detail to relate the strength and deformation capacity of steel members to those of the dynamically equivalent elasto-plastic system.