Earthquake Resistant Design of Reinforced Concrete Buildings

This paper briefly reviews the development of earthquake resistant design of buildings. The state-of-the-art of seismic design is discussed from the viewpoint of the performance criteria of buildings. These are (a) serviceability from frequent minor-intensity earthquake motions, (b) repairability from an infrequent but major-intensity earthquake motion, and (c) life safety from the maximum possible earthquake motion. The relation between the strength and ductility is discussed in length. With the introduction of performance-based engineering, the importance of repairability and serviceability criteria is emphasized. The concept of capacity design is outlined. A weak-beam strong-column mechanism is selected as an example of the target yielding mechanism for design.