Energy based design as an alternative intuitive criterion to the drift criterion

Abstract

Structural integrity with smaller structural plan density is doubtful under earthquake loading, while the structure is supposed to undergo inelastic deformation. Recent past damages under moderate earthquakes have raised a lot of questionnaires to the existing seismic design procedures. Drift controlled damage indices are consistently under reappraisal because of our better understanding of dynamic loading. Hence, energy based concept is suggested in an effort to explicate the response of building systems during earthquake loading. In this paper, explicit expressions for various components of energy i.e. strain, kinetic, damping and inelastic energy versus drift have been derived and discussed with the post processing results of building systems under varying strong earthquake motions. The incremental dynamic analysis is used in our study and the results show that the energy criterion analysis gives better one than the drift criterion for the structures subjected to earthquake ground motions.