Most of the existing seismic design codes are based on the empirical knowledge accumulated through systematic earthquake damage data collection and their analysis. Required levels of protection and seismic design forces gradually are increased after each series of catastrophic earthquakes particularly in developed countries. Many efforts have been made through experimental and analytical studie...

A novel hybrid method coupling genetic programming and orthogonal least squares, called GP/OLS, was employed to derive new ground-motion prediction equations (GMPEs). The principal ground-motion parameters formulated were peak ground acceleration (PGA), peak ground velocity (PGV) and peak ground displacement (PGD). The proposed GMPEs relate PGA, PGV and PGD to different seismic parameters inclu...

The use of flexible roof diaphragms is very common in the United States, both for residential buildings and large-scale commercial buildings. Due to its simplicity, the traditional diaphragm design method is commonly used in diaphragm design, in particular for the design of diaphragms with relatively small dimensions. The traditional diaphragm design method assumes the axial chord forces develo...

A technique is developed to model instrumented buildings with a second-generation performance-based earthquake engineering approach, producing a damage and loss estimate shortly after the cessation of strong motion. It estimates the likely locations of damage (including concealed structural damage), potentially saving the owner time and money by focusing post-earthquake safety and repair inspec...

Reduced dimensionality representation of strong ground motion records as a superposition of a relatively small number of pulses is studied. Such representation is obtained by the expansion of velocity in orthogonal wavelet series using the Fast Wavelet Transform, and approximation by only the largest energy terms in the series. The Coiflet 5 wavelet family is used, which is orthogonal, smooth a...