Applicability of linear analysis in probabilistic estimation of seismic building damage to reinforced-concrete structures

Abstract

As design has moved from strength based to performance based, there has been an effort to relate building response to damage. Because decision-makers typically consider human lives, property damage and cost, setting performance requirements in terms of the damage that a building is likely to sustain over time and its associated cost is more relevant to them. The Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) has developed a computationally expensive methodology for estimating cumulative damage to a structure over its lifetime. This thesis shows that linear analysis produces results within an acceptable margin of error when substituted for excessively accurate non-linear, resulting in significant time savings.