Improved Performance-Based Plastic Design for RC Moment Resisting Frames: Development and a Comparative Case Study

The performance-based plastic design (PBPD) method employs the global yield mechanism and target drift to design reinforced concrete moment resisting frames (RC-MRFs), which satisfies both the drift and strength limits without iterations. However, different structural systems have different hysteretic behaviors and the influence on the energy balance equation has not been dealt with in a quantitative manner. Moreover, the gravity loads are not considered in the plastic design procedure, which makes the beam design not within the safe margin for low and moderate seismic regions. In this paper, an improved PBPD method for RC-MRF is developed. Furthermore, a case study of seven-story RC-MRF is designed using both the improved PBPD and conventional equivalent static force design (ESFD) approaches. Comprehensive comparative analyses are performed in terms of nonlinear static pushover analysis, nonlinear dynamic analysis and seismic loss estimation. The results illustrate that the PBPD procedure can reduce the seismic losses. Hence, it is proved that PBPD is a viable and more robust design procedure as compared to the conventional ESFD procedure.