Seismic performance of controlled-rocking concentrically braced frames designed by the equivalent energy procedure

Recent earthquakes in New Zealand and Japan showed that structures designed according to modern building codes might suffer significant damages with hefty financial and social losses. The primary reason lies in the seismic design approach, where most seismic force resisting systems (SFRS) were designed to prevent structures from collapse during strong earthquake shaking, without considering the damage and the usability of the structure after an earthquake. In this paper, a controlled rocking-concentrically braced frame (CR-CBF) is proposed. CR-CBF is a fused structural system that uses a combination of post-tensioned tendons (PTs) and energy dissipation devices (EDs) to create a controlled-rocking mechanism to minimize structural repair costs and down time after a strong earthquake. PTs are placed in the structure to provide the restoring forces and to minimize any residual deformation in the structure, while EDs are placed at the base of a structure to dissipate the earthquake energy. To ensure the CR-CBF can achieve high performance, two (CR-CBF) prototypes with different heights are designed using the novel equivalent energy design procedure (EEDP). The EEDP procedure allows designers to select different performance objectives at different shaking intensities. The results of nonlinear dynamic analyses of the CR-CBFs show that CR-CBFs have superior seismic performances as intended and can be efficiently designed using EEDP. Finally, the seismic performance of CR-CBF against collapse is assessed using incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) outlined in the FEMA-P695 methodology. The results show that the CR-CBFs designed by EEDP have sufficient safety against collapse, hence it can be used as an efficient seismic force resisting system.