Displacement‐based seismic design for buildings

Abstract This paper presents a seismic design method based on displacements rather than force to include inelastic behavior of buildings. By using the substitute structure approach, a rational linear iteration method is proposed where a target displacement is specified and the required design force, member strength and stiffness are obtained. Examples that illustrate a few typical designs and results of parametric studies are also presented. The procedure shown here has been developed for multiple degree‐of‐freedom (MDOF) systems.