Multihazard Design and Cost-Benefit Analysis of Buildings with Special Moment-Resisting Steel Frames

This study evaluates the economic viability of allowing for controlled inelastic deformation of special moment-resisting buildings during wind storms. This is achieved through a set of case studies involving steel buildings of varying heights made of special moment-resisting frames located in three different cities in the United States, with different intensity levels of wind and seismic hazards. The evaluation procedure utilizes the latest developments in the field of performance-based earthquake engineering but in a multihazard context. By comparing the capital costs of the buildings with the expected life-cycle losses, it is shown that controlled inelastic deformation of buildings under wind load may be economically advantageous, depending upon the properties of the structures and characteristics of both hazards. It is also shown that, irrespective of whether a building is designed following the current code provisions or allowing for controlled inelastic deformation under wind excitations in seismically active regions, neglecting one hazard during performance-based cost-benefit analysis of the building can result in very large errors in the predicted life-cycle losses.