SEISMIC TOPOLOGY OPTIMIZATION AND COLLAPSE SAFETY ANALYSIS OF CHEVRON BRACED FRAMES

This study is devoted to seismic collapse safety analysis of performance based optimally seismic designed steel chevron braced frame structures. An efficient meta-heuristic algorithm namely, center of mass optimization is utilized to achieve the seismic optimization process. The seismic collapse performance of the optimally designed steel chevron braced frames is assessed by performing incremental dynamic analysis and determining their adjusted collapse margin ratios. Two design examples of 5-, and 10-story chevron braced frames are illustrated. The numerical results demonstrate that all the performance-based optimal designs are of acceptable seismic collapse safety.