Evaluation of Pushover Methodology for Mass-Irregular in Elevation RC Buildings

Abstract

In this paper a recently developed multimode pushover procedure is evaluated for nonregular in elevation systems. The procedure is applicable to asymmetric in plan buildings under the concurrent action of two horizontal seismic components, and its main advantage is that it does not require independent analysis in two orthogonal directions. Thus, the use of simplified directional combination formulas, which is not valid in the nonlinear range, is avoided. A preliminary evaluation of the proposed methodology led to quite satisfactory results. However, studies conducted to date are limited to regular buildings. Hence, in this study the procedure is applied to four asymmetric in plan and non-regular in elevation reinforced concrete buildings. The values of selected response quantities are compared to those resulting from a conventional pushover analysis variant and from nonlinear dynamic analysis. The whole evaluation study leads to useful conclusions.