About the author  ⁄ Matthew S. Speicher, Ph.D.

Matthew Speicher is a Research Structural Engineer in the Earthquake Engineering Group at NIST.

The Long Road

Advancing First-Generation Performance-Based Seismic Design for Steel Buildings

Part 3: Future Efforts for All Structure Types

Capabilities to conduct a performance-based seismic design (PBSD) of retrofitted existing buildings and new buildings have advanced exponentially over the past 25 years. This progress has augmented our knowledge of building behavior given an earthquake intensity. Still, we must be cautious of considering a PBSD as an exact answer; instead, a PBSD gives us information to support decision-making. There is still much work needed to support PBSD capabilities, and this depends on the type of assessment being conducted. At the same time, a vision for the not-so-distant future must also be established.

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Jan, 2022 By and In Structural Design Comments 1

The Long Road

Advancing First-Generation PBSD for Steel Buildings

Part 2: Case Studies

Implementing performance-based seismic design (PBSD) procedures for assessing existing buildings has generated interest in using similar approaches to design new buildings. The advantage of using these procedures is that designers can go outside the more prescriptive requirements of traditional design and have a more direct connection between expected performance and the design process (i.e., performance targets are explicitly defined upfront). This results in the engineer easily communicating the anticipated performance to the client and targeting a design that achieves beyond-code performance if desired. However, as PBSD was gaining popularity in practice approximately a decade ago, there had been limited published information into the relationship between standards for seismic design of new buildings and the seismic assessment of existing buildings.

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Nov, 2021 By and In Structural Design Comments 0

The Long Road

Advancing First-Generation Performance-Based Seismic Design for Steel Buildings

Part 1: Background and Motivation

First-generation performance-based seismic design (PBSD) principles are outlined in the latest edition of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Structural Engineering Institute’s ASCE/SEI 41-17: Seismic Evaluation and Retrofit of Existing Buildings referred to herein as ASCE 41. These PBSD principles have evolved since being introduced in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s FEMA 273: National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) Guidelines for the Seismic Rehabilitation of Buildings (FEMA 1997). ASCE 41 provides analytical procedures and performance criteria to evaluate an existing building for a defined performance objective and to design seismic retrofit strategies if the criteria are not satisfied. This ability to explicitly define a performance objective and then assess a building against that objective has led practitioners to adopt ASCE 41 for use in new building designs to meet the intent of ASCE 7: Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures, of which the latest edition is ASCE/SEI 7-16.

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Oct, 2021 By and In Structural Design Comments 0

Lab Test Confidential: Seismic Loading Protocols

The rise in performance-based engineering, in which a structure is proportioned to meet certain predictable performance requirements, necessitates reasonable estimates of component behavior during earthquakes. It is customary to determine component properties via physical lab tests. For components such as concrete anchors, verification of the ultimate strength is required and quasi-static pull tests are sufficient. The situation is more involved for other components, such as beam-to-column assemblies, since an earthquake produces dynamic back-and-forth cyclic actions and the component is often expected to deform inelastically. …
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Mar, 2020 By and In Structural Testing Comments 0
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