Seismic Design of Frame Buildings: a European Perspective

Abstract

This paper consists essentially of a review of the aspects considered to be major limitations, from a conceptual point of view if not always from a practical one, in the view of a codified approach to design and, more generally, in our ability of describing the seismic response of structures. The state of progress and the current research efforts on three interrelated subjects are first discussed: capacity design criteria and procedures, definition of the state of collapse and damage of a structure and viable techniques for a probabilistic calibration of safety factors. In the second part of the paper the specific problem of shear-bending interaction is considered, whose behavior is qualitatively known, but is neither quantitatively well defined nor commonly implemented in computer programs, and a simple proposal for an analytical model is presented.