9711015 Collins The seismic Design provisions of most building codes existing account for the uncertainty in the ground motion by defining a single "design" earthquake based on probability of exceedance or return period. A more rational approach to structural design would be to establish performance criteria for the structure corresponding to two (or more) levels of earthquake excitation, express these criteria in probabilistic terms, develop deterministic design-checking equations based on the probabilistic criteria, and design the structure using the deterministic design-checking equations. The objective of this research project is to further develop and refine the performance-based design procedure so that it will be applicable to more complex building configurations. To this end, analytical studies will be performed to investigate several issues including (1) investigating alternate choices of the lateral force distribution used in the static push-over analyses, (2) developing simple techniques to account for torsional effects and three- dimensional effects while preserving the probabilistic bases of the deterministic design equations, (3) accounting for the effects of nonstructural components on overall building performance, and (4) considering alternate measures of structural response to be used in formulating performance criteria. Although no experiments are planned, existing experimental data will be used to supplement the analytical results obtained during this investigation whenever possible.
