Performance Based Seismic Evaluation and Design

Performance-based seismic evaluation and design is a new, modern methodology being developed for the performance evaluation of existing structures and the design of new structures under the action of seismic ground motion. It aims to avoid the prescriptive approach currently prevailing in the seismic codes worldwide and promotes the use of nonlinear analysis techniques in order that seismic demands due to different levels of intensity of seismic ground motion can be reliably estimated. The corresponding multi-level structural and non-structural performance objectives are explicitly specified in compliance with the needs and interests of the society and individual stakeholders.

The inception of the performance-based seismic evaluation and design in practical terms can be dated to 1995 with the publication of the Vision 2000 document. Since then, research activity has been very intensive in Europe and worldwide, and performance-based seismic evaluation and design has been accepted by engineering community as an advanced procedure with an increasing number of practical applications. In addressing to the needs of the European design practice, the new procedure has been recently included in the final edition of Eurocode-8 for the seismic evaluation of existing structures as well as for the design of new ones. In spite of this development, however, the engineering community still awaits for more reliable and advanced methods that would overcome the limitations and approximations inherent in the current state-of-practice.

Current State

Research and graduate education activities on performance-based seismic evaluation and design and related subjects have started at KOERI-EED in late 1990’s. Since then a number of publications have been made and few master thesis have been completed. Recently three graduate students have started their studies on the same subject for doctoral dissertations.

Research on developing practical methods based on pushover analysis has been given a special emphasis in KOERI-EED. In this respect, a new procedure called “Incremental Response Spectrum Analysis (IRSA)” has been developed which has the ability of capturing higher mode effects and hence the potential of realizing the practical inelastic seismic performance evaluation of irregular buildings and bridges. The procedure has attracted considerable interest in the literature and currently being validated and further improved through a PhD study.

In 2004, a Task Group is formed under European Association of Earthquake Engineering (EAEE) on “TG 1 - Performance-Based Design” where Aydinoglu of KOERI-EED (coordinator of this work package) and Negro of JRC-Ispra were appointed as co-coordinators. TG–1 will organize a special session in the forthcoming European Conference on Earthquake Engineering and Seismology to be held in 2006 in Geneva. In addition, co-coordinators of TG–1 will act as guest editors of a special issue of Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering, the official publication of EAEE, in 2006.