A Performace–Based Design Approach in Turkish Seismic Design Code for Port Structures

Abstract eng:
A new seismic design code is being enforced in Turkey, effective September 1, 2008, for transportation structures officially administered by General Directorate for Construction of Railways, Harbors and Airports (RHA) of Ministry of Transportation. The aim of this contribution is to describe the main aspects of the RHA Seismic Code with special emphasis given to port structures. The most important aspect of the code rests on its main approach incorporating “performance-based design”. In this context, port structures have been classified with respect to their expected seismic performance, usage and functional importance, namely, special, nominal, simple and unimportant structures. This is followed by standard definition of performance levels, namely “Minimum Damage Performance Level”, “Controlled Damage Performance Level” and “Excessive Damage Performance Level” prior to state of collapse. On the other hand, design earthquakes have been specified in three levels with probability of exceedance of 50%, 10% and 2% in 50 years, respectively. Minimum performance objectives are then specified for each class of structure under different earthquake levels. Two different classes of design methods have been specified in the code, namely, Strength-Based Design (SBD) and Deformation-Based Design (DBD). The latter includes practice-oriented nonlinear analysis, namely pushover analysis as well as nonlinear response history analysis in the time domain. Acceptance criteria are specified in terms of nonlinear deformation quantities for multi-level performance objectives. In view of a very limited number of seismic codes available for port structures, the new Turkish Seismic Code is expected to attract a special attention with its modern approach.

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