Estimation of earthquake induced story hysteretic energy of multi-Story buildings

The goal of energy-based seismic design is to obtain a structural design with a higher energy dissipation capacity than the energy dissipation demands incurred under earthquake motions. Accurate estimation of the story hysteretic energy demand of a multi-story structure is the key to meeting this goal. Based on the assumption of a mode-equivalent single-degree-of-freedom system, the energy equilibrium relationship of a multi-story structure under seismic action is transformed into that of a multi-mode analysis of several single degree-of-freedom systems. A simplified equation for the estimation of the story seismic hysteretic energy demand was then derived according to the story shear force and deformation of multi-story buildings, and the deformation and energy relationships between the mode-equivalent single-degree-of-freedom system and the original structure. Sites were categorized into three types based on soil hardness, namely, hard soil, intermediate hard (soft) soil, and soft soil. For each site type, a 5-story and 10-story reinforced concrete frame structure were designed and employed as calculation examples. Fifty-six earthquake acceleration records were used as horizontal excitations to validate the accuracy of the proposed method. The results verify the following. (1) The distribution of seismic hysteretic energy along the stories demonstrate a degree of regularity. (2) For the low rise buildings, use of only the first mode shape provides reasonably accurate results, whereas, for the medium or high rise buildings, several mode shapes should be included and superposed to achieve high precision. (3) The estimated hysteretic energy distribution of bottom stories tends to be underestimated, which should be modified in actual applications.