An Energy-Factor Method for the Displacement-Based Seismic Design of RC Wall Structures

A number of different displacement-based design (DBD) methods have been put forward over the past decade in order to address shortcomings with current force-based design approaches. Considerable progress has been made in developing DBD procedures for a wide variety of structural typologies. However, the new displacement based design approaches are considerably more time-consuming for simple low-and medium-rise structures than quick force-based design methods such as the equivalent lateral force method. In this work, a new simplified displacement-based design approach, referred to as the energy-factor method, is described and applied to a number of case-study wall structures. The results of the method are compared with those obtained from the equivalent force-based design approach and the Direct DBD method. The performance of the method is then gauged through a series of nonlinear time-history analyses using spectrum-compatible accelerograms. The results indicate that the simple energy-factor method could offer excellent possibilities for the performance-based design of regular low-and medium-rise structures.