The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

Tall reinforced concrete buildings: conceptual earthquake-resistant design methodology

Bertero, Raul D.; Bertero, Vitelmo V.

UCB/EERC-92/16, Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, 1992-12, 251 pages (620.2/B3745/1992)

The ultimate goal of the studies reported in this report is to formulate a reliable methodology for the preliminary earthquake-resistant design of highrise reinforced concrete buildings. This improved methodology should be a conceptual one based on well-established fundamental principles of structural dynamics, mechanical behavior of actual buildings, and comprehensive design. It should also be in compliance with the worldwide accepted earthquake-resistant design philosophy. The studies undertaken and conducted to achieve this goal are presented and discussed. The first chapter briefly states the need for formulating an overall rational conceptual methodology for earthquake-resistant design and describes the main objectives of the report. Chapter 2 describes the acquisition and processing of the data needed to establish reliable design earthquakes. Chapter 3 describes the different steps involved in the preliminary analysis of the preliminary earthquake-resistant design procedure, and contains a flow chart summarizing these steps. The theoretical aspects of the solution of the problems involved in the preliminary analysis step are discussed in detail in Chapter 4. In Chapter 5, the theoretical aspects of the preliminary design step are discussed. Application of the developed conceptual methodology to the preliminary earthquake-resistant design of a building is discussed in Chapter 6. Chapter 7 describes the analyses that were conducted to evaluate the preliminary design of the 30-story reinforced concrete building. The final chapter summarizes the main results obtained and observations made during the studies reported.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/EERC/EERC-92-16.pdf (16 MB)