Seismic performance design of concrete buildings with life-cycle cost optimization

In order to meet the emerging trend of performance-based design approach, an optimization technique by incorporating the performance-based seismic design of concrete building structures in the form of multi-objective optimization has been developed in the study. The life-cycle cost of a reinforced concrete (RC) building frame is minimized subject to inelastic drift response performance caused by pushover loading. Due to the fact that the initial construction cost and the expected damage loss are conflicting by nature, the life-cycle cost of a building structure can be posed as a multi-objective optimization problem and solved by the (-constraint method and Optimality Criteria (OC) method to produce a Pareto optimal set, from which the best compromise solution can be selected. The optimization technique developed is capable of seeking for the best balance so that design performance criteria are satisfied simultaneously with the least life-cycle cost.