Optimal Seismic Performance-Based Design of Reinforced Concrete Buildings

In order to meet the emerging trend of the performance-based design approach and to improve the design efficiency, this chapter presents a numerical optimization technique for both minimum material cost and life-cycle cost design of building structures subject to multiple levels of linear elastic and nonlinear elastic seismic drift performance design constraints. This chapter firstly introduces an elastic seismic drift design of reinforced concrete (RC) building structures based on elastic response spectrum analysis method; and then presents the inelastic design optimization based on the nonlinear pushover analysis method. Finally, the optimal seismic performance-based design of RC buildings is posed as a multi-objective optimization problem in which the life-cycle cost of a building is to be minimised subject to multiple levels of seismic performance design criteria. The computer based optimization methodology developed provides a powerful numerical design tool for performance-based design of RC building structures.