New approaches to seismic design of steel framed buildings

大多数国际抗震设计规定，包括加拿大国家建筑规范（2005），采用能力设计原则来获得能够承受地震请求的结构。虽然使用这种方法通常可以实现主要的设计目标，但该方法存在一些内在的不一致性。例如，用于预测位移和变形的设计值的程序不透明，并且依赖于一些人工规则，这些规则不能反映实际结构中存在的复杂相互作用。对于某些结构体系，这可能会导致结构质量的显著增加，而不会显著改善其抗震性能。

The majority of the international seismic design provisions, including the National Building Code of Canada (2005), employ the principles of capacity design to obtain structures capable of withstanding seismic solicitations. Although the main design objectives are usually achieved using this approach, the method presents several intrinsic inconsistencies. For instance, the procedures used to predict design values of displacements and deformations are not transparent and rely on somewhat artificial rules which fail to reflect the complex interactions that exist in actual structures. For certain structural systems, this can result in an important increase of structural mass without significantly improving the seismic behaviour.