This book examines and presents essential aspects of the behavior, analysis, design and detailing of reinforced concrete buildings subjected to strong seismic activity. Seismic design is an extremely complex problem that has seen spectacular development in the last decades. The present volume tries to show how the principles and methods of earthquake engineering can be applied to seismic analysis and design of reinforced concrete buildings. The book starts with an up-to-date presentation of fundamental aspects of reinforced concrete behavior quantified through constitutive laws for monotonic and hysteretic loading. Basic concepts of post-elastic analysis like plastic hinge, plastic length, fiber models, and stable and unstable hysteretic behaviour are, accordingly, defined and commented upon. For a deeper understanding of seismic design philosophy and of static and dynamic post-elastic analysis, seismic behavior of different types of reinforced concrete structures (frames, walls) is examined in detail. Next, up-to-date methods for analysis and design are presented. The powerful concept of structural system is defined and systematically used to explain the response to seismic activity, as well as the procedures for analysis and detailing of common building structures. Several case studies are presented. The book is not code-oriented. The structural design codes are subject to constant reevaluation and updating. Rather than presenting code provisions, this book offers a coherent system of notions, concepts and methods, which facilitate understanding and application of any design code. The content of this book is based mainly on the authors’ personal experience which is a combination of their teaching and research activity as well as their work in the private sector as structural designers. The work will serve to help students and researchers, as well as structural designers to better understand the fundamental aspects of behavior and analysis of reinforced concrete structures and accordingly to gain knowledge that will ensure a sound design of buildings.

The costs of inadequate earthquake engineering are huge, especially for reinforced concrete buildings. This book presents the principles of earthquake-resistant structural engineering, and uses the latest tools and techniques to give practical design guidance to address single or multiple seismic performance levels. It presents an elegant, simple and theoretically coherent design framework. Required strength is determined on the basis of an estimated yield displacement and desired limits of system ductility and drift demands. A simple deterministic approach is presented along with its elaboration into a probabilistic treatment that allows for design to limit annual probabilities of failure. The design method allows the seismic force resisting system to be designed on the basis of elastic analysis results, while nonlinear analysis is used for performance verification. Detailing requirements of ACI 318 and Eurocode 8 are presented. Students will benefit from the coverage of seismology, structural dynamics, reinforced concrete, and capacity design approaches, which allows the book to be used as a foundation text in earthquake engineering.

This Special Issue was created to collect the most recent and novel research on seismic performance evaluation of building structures. This issue includes three important topics on seismic engineering for building structures: (1) seismic design and performance evaluation, (2) structural dynamics, and (3) seismic hazard and risk analysis. To protect building structures from earthquakes, it is necessary to conduct seismic performance evaluations on structures with reliable methods and to retrofit these structures appropriately using the results of the seismic performance evaluation.

This report describes a recommended methodology for reliably quantifying building system performance and response parameters for use in seismic design. The recommended methodology (referred to herein as the Methodology) provides a rational basis for establishing global seismic performance factors (SPFs), including the response modification coefficient (R factor), the system overstrength factor, and deflection amplification factor (Cd), of new seismic-force-resisting systems proposed for inclusion in model building codes. The purpose of this Methodology is to provide a rational basis for determining building seismic performance factors that, when properly implemented in the seismic design process, will result in equivalent safety against collapse in an earthquake, comparable to the inherent safety against collapse intended by current seismic codes, for buildings with different seismic-force-resisting systems.

This book evaluates the seismic performance of concrete gravity dams, considering the effects of strong motion duration, mainshock-aftershock seismic sequence, and near-fault ground motion. It employs both the extended finite element method (XFEM) and concrete damaged plasticity (CDP) models to characterize the mechanical behavior of concrete gravity dams under strong ground motions, including the dam-reservoir-foundation interaction. In addition, it discusses the effects of the initial crack, earthquake direction, and cross-stream seismic excitation on the nonlinear dynamic response to strong ground motions, and on the damage-cracking risk of concrete gravity dams. This book provides a theoretical basis for the seismic performance evaluation of high dams, and can also be used as a reference resource for researchers and graduate students engaged in the seismic design of high dams.

Seismic Performance of Asymmetric Building Structures presents detailed investigations on the effective assessment of structural seismic response under excessive torsional vibrations, demonstrating behavioural aspects from local response perspective to global seismic demands. The work provides comprehensive analytical, computational, experimental investigations, and proposes improved design guidelines that structural engineers can utilize to enhance the seismic design of asymmetric building structures. Combining extensive experimental and numerical data stock for seismic performance assessment with a particular focus on asymmetric building structures, the book includes: • An overview of asymmetric building structures from seismic damage perspective • Local and global performance assessment of asymmetric structures under extreme seismic actions • Post-earthquake damage evaluation from varying frequency trends • Extended numerical applications for experimental response validations • Evaluation of critical regions of asymmetric structure with stress concentration • Statistical distribution of seismic response under varying design parameters • Design guidelines for asymmetric building structures This work's comprehensive evaluations are carried out with modern sensing techniques planned with meticulous attention to cover objectives with a particular focus on asymmetry in reinforced concrete and steel structures. It assesses various aspects of asymmetric building structures that are rarely dealt with in the current literature. It gathers fruitful information from various building design codes and explains their limitations in addressing damage-related challenges, which is not only useful for practicing engineers but also for academics. The book will be invaluable for experts, researchers, students and practitioners from relevant areas, as well as for emergency preparedness managers.

Seismic Performance of Soil-Foundation-Structure Systems presents invited papers presented at the international workshop (University of Auckland, New Zealand, 21-22 November 2016). This international workshop brought together outstanding work in earthquake engineering that embraces a holistic consideration of soilfoundation-structure systems. For example, the diversity of papers in this volume is represented by contributions from the fields of shallow foundation in liquefiable soil, spatially distributed lifelines, bridges, clustered structures (see photo on front cover), sea floor seismic motion, multi-axial ground excitation, deep foundations, soil-foundation-structurefluid interaction, liquefaction-induced settlement and uplift with SFSI. A fundamental knowledge gap is manifested by the isolated manner geotechnical and structural engineers work. A holistic consideration of soil-foundation-structures systems is only possible if civil engineers work collaboratively to the mutual benefit of all disciplines. Another gap occurs by the retarded application of up-to-date research findings in engineering design practices. Seismic Performance of Soil-Foundation-Structure Systems is the outcome from the recognized need to close this gap, since it has been observed that a considerable delay exists between published research findings and application of the principles revealed by the research. Seismic Performance of Soil-Foundation-Structure Systems will be helpful in developing more understanding of the complex nature of responses these systems present under strong earthquakes, and will assist engineers in closing the gaps identified above.