Integrated Reliability-Based Design Optimization of Isolated Concrete Buildings under Spectrum Loading

Abstract eng:
In conventional seismic design of base-isolated concrete buildings, not only are the superstructure and the isolation system analyzed and designed separately, but also the determination of satisfactory dynamic responses in both the superstructure and isolation system requires a highly iterative trial-and-error reanalysis and redesign process even with the aid of today’s computer software. It is intended in this research that both the structure and base isolation, as a whole, are simultaneously optimized to achieve optimal performance-based design. Besides, since uncertainties are not considered in the conventional deterministic optimization, such optimized structures may generally result in higher failure probabilities than optimal reliability-based structures. Therefore, structural reliability theory should be incorporated into the structural optimization process. Reliability-based structural optimization can provide a good balance between the structural reliability and optimal design objectives, while specified performance requirements are satisfied. This paper presents an effective numerical deterministic and reliability-based optimization technique for the design of base-isolated concrete building structures under spectrum loading. Attempts have been made to automate the integrated spectrum analysis, reliability analysis and design optimization procedure and to minimize the total cost of the base-isolated building subject to multiple design performance criteria in terms of the inter-story drift of the superstructure and the lateral displacement of the isolation system or corresponding reliability constraints. An illustrative example shows that the deterministic design optimization cannot ensure designs with satisfactory reliability level whilst reliability-based design optimization can achieve the objective through consideration of uncertainties.

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