TABLE OF CONTENTS Y. K. WEN
Department of Givil and Environment al Engineering
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
E-mail: y-wen@uiuc.edu
Structural performance in recent earthquakes and hurricanes have exposed the weakness of current design procedures and shown the need for new concepts and methodologies for performance evaluation and design. The consideration and proper treatment of the large uncertainty in the loadings and the building capacity including complex response behavior in the nonlinear range is essential in the evaluation and design process. A reliability-based framework for analysis and design is most suitable for this purpose. Performance check of the structures can be carried out at multiple levels from immediate occupancy to incipient collapse. To arrive at optimal target reliability, lifecycle cost criteria can be used. The methodology is demonstrated by application to performance evaluation and design of structures under earthquake and wind hazards. The inconsistency of design against these hazards in current codes is pointed out.
Building performance has been less than satisfactory in recent natural hazards such as Northridge (US), Kobe (Japan), and Chi-Chi (Taiwan) earthquakes and hurricanes Hugo, Andrews, and Ivan in United States. These events bring to focus how the structural engineering profession treats the large uncertainty in the natural hazards and structural capacity and what reliability existing buildings have against future hazards. Although the uncertainty of loads has been well recognized by the profession, until recently, the incorporation of uncertainty in most building code procedures has been limited to the selection of design loads...
