PRESENTATION – “Performance of Seismic Systems” by Ron Mayes

When:
5:30pm Tuesday 26th March 2013

Abstract:

The Christchurch earthquakes have highlighted the mismatch in expectations between the engineering profession and society regarding the seismic performance of buildings. While most modern buildings performed as expected, many buildings have been, or are to be, demolished. The ownership, occupancy, and societal costs of only targeting life-safety as the accepted performance standard for building design are now apparent in New Zealand.

The next generation of performance-based seismic design procedures, outlined in the FEMA P-58 document, provide engineers with the tools to express the seismic performance of the entire building in terms of the future life loss, facility repair costs and downtime. This presentation will outline the FEMA P-58 procedure and present the results of a comparative study of five different structural systems for a three storey commercial and laboratory building: moment frame; buckling restrained braced frame; viscously damped moment frame; Pres-Lam timber shear wall; and base isolated braced frame.
Each system was analyzed as a fully non-linear structure and the calculated drifts and floor accelerations were input into the FEMA P-58 PACT tool to evaluate the overall building performance. This study compares the performance differences in terms of damage costs and downtime and relative first costs associated with the five seismic systems.

RONALD L. MAYES:

Ron received his Ph.D. in Structural Engineering from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 1972 and has spent his career working in Northern California. He is a past Secretary/Treasurer of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, a past Vice President of The Masonry Society and a past Technical and Executive Director of Applied Technology Council.. He was selected as