Seismic Performance Assessment of Conventional Construction and Ductile Concrete Moment Frames Using Performance-Based Unified Procedure

A Performance-Based Unified (PBU) procedure has recently been proposed by the National Research Council Canada (NRC) to systematically evaluate seismic design requirements available in the National Building Codes (NBC) of Canada. Conventional Construction reinforced Concrete Moment-resisting Frame (CC-CMF) and Ductile reinforced Concrete Moment-Resisting Frame (D-CMF) systems were used in this paper to first assess the proposed PBU procedure and second determine the adequacy of the basis for seismic design requirements in NBC and see its performance margin against different structural performance levels. Results indicate that the detailed screening in the PBU procedure efficiently reduces the number of Incremental Dynamic Analyses (IDA) by more than 60% for CC-CMF while providing remarkable accuracy. It was also found that the CC-CMF system designed for the Normal importance category can provide an adequate margin against Life Safety (LS) performance level objectives, while the D-CMF system designed for the same importance category passes the Collapse Prevention (CP) performance level criteria.