Reliability-Based Probabilistic Safety Evaluation of Seismic Design Approaches for RC–MR Buildings

Abstract

This study evaluates the seismic safety of reinforced concrete moment-resistant (RC–MR) buildings designed with two different methods, i.e., direct displacement based design (DDBD) and conventional force based design (FBD), through a reliability-based probabilistic approach. Two groups of buildings with irregular but symmetric configuration of frames and different heights are designed based on the aforementioned seismic design approaches. After validation of the model developed in OpenSees version 2.5.0 software, all buildings are subjected to incremental dynamic analysis. The results indicate that the irregularity of the configuration of the frames has challenged the seismic performance of the buildings designed with the DDBD approach, whereas changing the height does not significantly affect the seismic performance. Comparison of the two seismic design approaches shows that by changing the approach from DDBD to FBD, the structures behave in a highly vulnerable and unreliable way, exhibiting poor seismic performance. Finally, the evaluation of various probabilistic methods indicates that the use of both aleatory and epistemic uncertainties increases the mean annual frequency of exceedance, resulting in a more conservative level of damage.