Developing a Guideline for Seismic Performance-Based Design of Steel Building Structures

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Current seismic design codes and standards for buildings adopt a prescriptive design approach to provide safety and prevent failure or collapse of buildings under severe earthquakes. However, these prescriptive procedures do not explicitly define the expected performance levels for the structure. In most cases, the prescriptive design does not verify whether the structure would achieve the desired level of performance. As an alternative, a performance-based seismic design approach has been developed that involves defining expected performance objectives, conducting initial design and verifying performance. The performance-based design approach directly relates the building design to the expected performance levels, probable repair costs, economic losses and other consequences, thus allowing for communicating the expected performance levels to buildings owners, stakeholders, and decision makers. Despite several benefits in using a performance-based design method, explicit guidelines are not yet provided in current Canadian design codes and standards. This project will help the industry partner, Thornton Tomasetti, and the engineering design profession as a whole, by developing a detailed design guideline for using the performance-based seismic design method for steel buildings in Canada. The project will investigate the impact of the design method on the seismic performance of steel building structures in Canada.