UC Berkeley

Earthquake engineering practice is increasingly using performance-based procedures for evaluating existing buildings and proposed designs of new buildings. Both nonlinear static and nonlinear response history analyses (RHA) are used for estimating engineering demand parameters (EDPs)--floor displacements, story drifts, internal forces, hinge rotation, etc--in performance-based engineering of buildings. Topics related to both analysis procedures are investigated in this dissertation.

In the first part, the original modal pushover analysis (MPA) to estimate seismic demands due to one component of ground motion is extended to consider two horizontal components simultaneously in three-dimensional analysis of buildings, and to estimate internal forces and plastic hinge rotations directly from pushover analyses. Subsequently, the accuracy of MPA in estimating EDPs for tall buildings and unsymmetric-plan buildings is evaluated. Seismic demands for recently designed and built 48- and 62-story buildings with ductile concrete core walls--designed according to the alternative provisions of the 2001 San Francisco Building Code (SFBC)--due to an ensemble of 30 ground motions are computed by MPA and nonlinear RHA, and compared. We demonstrate that MPA procedure shows degree of accuracy that is sufficient for practical application in estimating median values of EDPs for tall buildings subjected to two horizontal components of ground motion. The accuracy of the extended MPA procedure is also evaluated for low- and medium-rise unsymmetric-plan buildings with ductile frames designed in accordance with the 1985 Uniform Building Code (UBC85) and the 2006 International Building Code (IBC06). Seismic demands are computed for six unsymmetric-plan buildings due to 39 ground motions acting simultaneously in two orthogonal horizontal directions. Comparing these results with those from nonlinear RHA, we demonstrate that MPA provides good estimates of EDPs whereas the procedures specified in the ASCE/SEI 41-06 standard and the Eurocode 8 are not satisfactory for estimating seismic demands for unsymmetric-plan buildings.

The second part of the dissertation concerns nonlinear response history analysis of buildings. With the goal of developing effective procedures for selection and scaling of multi-component ground motions to be used in nonlinear RHA, a modal-pushover-based-scaling (MPS) procedure is developed in this investigation. The developed MPS procedure is an extension of the original MPS procedure for one component of ground motion to two horizontal components. In this investigation, each horizontal component of ground motion is scaled by a factor selected to match the deformation of its first-"mode" inelastic SDF system to a target inelastic deformation that may be estimated using a design (or response) spectrum. The properties of the first-"mode" inelastic SDF system are determined by pushover analysis of the building using the first-mode distribution. Based on the results for medium-rise symmetric-plan and unsymmetric-plan buildings with ductile frames, we demonstrate that the MPS procedure provides much superior results than the scaling procedure specified in the ASCE/SEI 7-05 standard.