Nowadays, many buildings with steel Moment Resisting Frames (MRF) are built in seismic zones when seismic codes are at its early stages of development, and as such, these structures are often designed solely to resist lateral wind loads without providing an overall ductile mechanism. On the other hand, current seismic design criteria based on hierarchy of resistance allow enhancing the structur...

Steel Plate Shear Wall (SPSW) is an emerging seismic load-resistant system that, compared to other systems, enjoys the advantages of stable ductile behavior, fewer detailing requirements, rapid constructability, and economy. American seismic provisions decree that a SPSW should be designed as a moment frame with a web infill plate. Specifically, in case of buildings taller than 160 ft, it decre...

Force-based seismic design involves the reduction of elastic spectra by introducing a behavior factor, q. This approach is widespread in engineering practice; however, recent studies have shown that structures consistently designed at different sites will not share same level risk, which can be defined as annual rate structure failing to meet performance objective, despite actions having exceed...

The main purpose of the present work is to investigate the impact of soil-structure interaction on performance-based design optimization of steel moment resisting frame (MRF) structures. To this end, the seismic performance of optimally designed MRFs with rigid supports is compared with that of the optimal designs with a flexible base in the context of performance-based design. Two efficient me...

Unreinforced masonry (URM) structures are known to be rather vulnerable to seismic loading. Modern URM buildings with reinforced concrete (RC) slabs might, however, have an acceptable seismic performance for regions of low to moderate seismicity. In particular in countries of moderate seismicity it is often difficult to demonstrate the seismic safety of modern URM buildings by means of force-ba...

Design charts for seismic pressures against rigid walls subjected to horizontal earthquake shaking are presented for both uniform and nonuniform backfills. Solutions are based on a simplified model of soil response which gives results that agree almost exactly with rigorous solutions. Peak seismic thrusts are presented for three different soil profiles. For each profile, 250 combinations of gro...

In order to meet the needs of performance-based seismic design, a new type of adaptive-slit shear wall that is easy to construct and behaves well under cyclic loading is introduced to improve the seismic performance of conventional shear wall structures. The seismic damage of an adaptive-slit shear wall develops gradually and it transforms from integral wall into slit wall. The mechanical chara...

Performance based design (PBD) is an iterative exercise in which a preliminary trial design of the building structure is selected and if the selected trial design of the building structure does not conform to the desired performance objective, the trial design is revised. In this context, development of a fundamental approach for performance based seismic design of masonry infilled frames with ...