Rapid assessment of seismic demand in existing building structures

Abstract

Seismic assessment of building structures can be a very involved process. This paper presents a simplifi ed and rational manual procedure for rapid predictions of maximum inter-storey drift demand in tall buildings, which does not require frame analysis nor fi nite element analysis to be carried out and can be expedited by the use of a spreadsheet program. The methodology comprises a series of stages, beginning with the development of an elastic design response spectrum (or a uniform hazard spectrum) for specifying the level of seismic hazard, followed by the inclusion of a site-specifi c factor that represents the effects of soil amplifi cation. The maximum seismic inter-storey drift demand..