Use of Base Isolation and Supplemental Dampers for Sustainable Structural Design of Buildings

Abstract eng:
In this paper, the effectiveness of seismic control devices in reducing initial embodied emissions from RC buildings is investigated within the context of sustainable structural design. The study is divided in four sections. In the first, the sustainability indicators for assessment, namely embodied energy and embodied carbon are introduced, and a definition of sustainable structural design is proposed. In the second, the seismic performance-based design of the following three buildings is presented: conventional baseline bare building, building with nonlinear viscous dampers, and base-isolated building. The buildings were subjected to a suite of 10 pairs of ground motions, and analyzed by time-history analysis. In the third section, the embodied energy and embodied carbon emitted for each individual building are calculated by using coefficients taken from an existing inventory. Then, the sustainable performance of the buildings with seismic devices is calculated by direct normalization with the baseline building. Finally, in the last section, the results and conclusions are discussed. The most significant findings suggest the use of two ways of seismic energy dissipation is the most efficient approach to achieve sustainable structural design. Although the embodied emissions from seismic devices were not included in the analysis, the results suggest there is a wide interval to allocate them without affectation in the sustainability improvements achieved. The study was conducted with the current knowledge and tools available. Therefore, it may be implemented in practicing engineering; for instance, in LEED® simulations that require sustainable structural information as input in complex integrative models.

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