Jack Moehle - Performance based seismic design of tall buildings

We live in a time when social, environmental, and economic factors in the Western United States favour the development of urban centres populated by high-rise buildings. The design of this new generation of high-rise buildings has benefited from the advancement of performance-based design methods in which structural engineers characterize expected performance for hypothesized earthquake shaking using computer simulation. The design approach has evolved rapidly - whereas a decade ago each project had its own, project-specific basis, today the designs are guided by a set of consensus standards. The seminar described the performance-based design approach and illustrated it through the example of a tall building design in San Francisco.