In this paper existing vulnerability relationships for reinforced concrete structures are reviewed with a view to their application to a European (and similar) seismic risk assessment scenario. New empirical fragility curves for reinforced concrete building populations are derived based on a data bank of 99 post-earthquake damage distributions observed in 19 earthquakes and concerning a total o...

One of the typically damaged steel beam-column connection during the Northridge earthquake of 1994 was bolted-web, welded-flange (BWWF), now known as “pre-Northridge” connection. Proposed post-Northridge connections are more ductile and capable of dissipating more energy, thus improving the behavior of steel moment resisting frames (SMRF). The post-Northridge connections with added ductility wi...

In the present study, ten steel-moment resisting frames (SMRFs) having different numbers of stories ranging from 3 to 20 stories and fundamental periods of vibration ranging from 0.3 to 3.0 second were optimized subjected to a set of earthquake ground motions using the concept of uniform damage distribution along the height of the structures. Based on the step-by-step optimization algorithm dev...

        Sensitivity analysis of structures considering their nonlinear behavior has recently been an important process in optimal design of them based on new design concepts such as Performance-Based Design (PBD). The main objective of this research is to develop an efficient and applicable method for nonlinear sensitivity analysis of Reinforcement Concrete Moment Resisting Frames (RCMRF) accou...

Soft storey building is popular due to the functional and aesthetic purpose, despite its weakness in resisting seismic excitation. Nonlinear Static (Pushover) Analysis (POA) is a time saving and simple assessment procedure prosposed in Eurocode 8 (EC8). However, its reliability in designing structure still remains a question. At the first stage, seismic performance of several building models us...

Endurance time (ET) method is a relatively new performance-based earthquake method for structural evaluation and design. In this method, the structure is subjected to a gradually intensifying accelorogram(s) and its performance is assessed based on the maximum time duration that it can meet the specified performance objectives. Using moment-resisting and braced frames which are rehabilitated by...