Performance-Based Design for Cost-Effective Seismic Hazard Mitigation in New Buildings Using Passive Dampers

Current seismic design of buildings with Special Moment Resisting Frames (SMRFs) as the primary lateral load resisting system results in large members, which are required to satisfy both strength and drift code criteria. During an earthquake, buildings with SMRFs dissipate energy through localized yielding in the beams. The introduction of supplemental dampers provides an additional source of energy dissipation and improves system performance by reducing the damage in SMRF beams and by controlling drift. A new Simplified Design Procedure (SDP) has been developed for the seismic design of buildings with SMRFs and supplemental dampers. This study utilizes the SDP to design a prototype building located in a high seismic zone. In accordance with the SDP, SMRFs were designed to only satisfy strength criteria (resulting in smaller members) using R = 8 and supplemental dampers were introduced to control the drifts to satisfy code-based limits. Two types of SMRFs were studied; a SMRF that is designed for 100% of the base shear (100V) and a SMRF that is designed for 75% of the base shear (75V). Finally, the effects of the stiffness of the damped braced frames (DBFs) were studied to make elastomeric dampers more efficient. This study may lead to the adoption of the SDP in future building codes for use by most practicing engineers.