Performance Based Design

Adewale Oduwole
The George Washington University
Assignment #1
3
rd
September 2013







2
In lame man terms, my understanding of performance-based design is assessment
of how a building is likely to perform under potential seismic hazard events, considering
the uncertainties in the assessment and how the building will actual respond.
In other words, the purpose of the performance based design( PBD) is solely to identify
and assess the PBD methodologies, tools, procedures, and engineering practices for new
and existing structures with regard to strength, serviceability, or survivability criteria
under extreme conditions (Jian).
Initially, the practice of meeting performance-based design objectives was rather
informal, nonstandard, and qualitative. Engineers characterized the performance of
structures from life-safe or not to ratings from poor to good. This approach was
appropriate given the limited capability of seismic-resistant design technology to deliver
building designs capable of quantifiable performance.
Recently, The Department of Homeland Securitys Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA) has made the prevention or mitigation of this countrys losses from
hazards that affect the built environment one of its primary goals. It is quite essential for
the structures of this day and age to withstand unforeseen forces, as these structures tend
to grow larger in size and pose deadly side effects when affected by seismic forces. In
1992 (FEMA) sponsored the development of national consensus guidelines for the
seismic retrofit of buildings.
The advancement of present generation performance-based seismic design
procedures is widely recognized in the earthquake engineering community as an essential
next step in the nations drive to develop resilient, loss-resistant communities
(Christopher 2012).
3
The development of seismic design is an ongoing process of improvement. The evolution
of seismic design provisions in model building codes can be tracked against the
occurrence of damaging earthquakes, both in the United States and abroad.
Earthquakes in the early part of the 20
th
century (the 1925 Santa Barbara and 1933 Long
Beach earthquakes) led to the development of regulations to provide for minimum levels
of lateral strength design. In the latter part of the 20
th
century, earthquakes such as the
1971 San Fernando Earthquake led to the realization that, in addition to strength,
buildings needed to have the ability to deform without catastrophic failure, characteristic
know as ductility.
Property and insured loses as a result of the Northridge Earthquake, recognized that the
level of structural and nonstructural damages that could occur in code-compliant
buildings may not be consistent with the public notion of acceptable performance.
After the Recognition that code-based strength and ductility requirements applicable for
the design of new buildings are not suitable for the evaluation and upgrade of existing
buildings, this led to the development of performance-based design.








4
References
FEMA 273. Structural Engineers Assn. of California (SEAOC), Vision 2000 Committee.
April 3, 1995. J. Soulages, ed. Performance Based Seismic Engineering of
Buildings. [Sacramento, Calif.:]. 2 vols.
Christopher Rojahn, ATC Executive Director, Mar 2 2012; FEMA: Next-
Generation-Based Seismic Design Guidelines. Sept 1 2013
http://www.fema.gov/media-library-data/20130726-1600-20490-
1237/fema445.pdf
Jian Zhang, Pd.D., ASCE: Structural Engineering Institute. Sept 1 2012
http://www.asce.org/sei/CommitteeDetail.aspx?committeeId=000000885385