Quantifying the Likelihood of Exceeding a Limit State via the Displacement-based Assessment Approach

ABSTRACT

The displacement-based assessment procedure of Priestley and co-authors was formulated to provide either a pass-fail type of assessment or an indication of the likelihood of exceeding a selected limit state. To account for the effect of uncertainty in demand and capacity as part of the displacement-based assessment, it has also been shown that the SAC-FEMA approach can be adopted. In this work, the displacement-based assessment approach is improved by developing new relationships between intensity and inelastic displacement demand that permits the impact of multiple intensity levels on the likelihood of exceeding a limit state to be assessed contemporarily. The benefit of the new approach is illustrated by comparing the annual probability of exceeding key limit states as obtained through multi-stripe analyses with results obtained from the simplified approach. Results indicate that the simplified method performs reliably for the cases considered. Limitations with the new approach and future research needs are identified.

KEYWORDS:

• Displacement-based assessment
• SAC/FEMA approach
• probabilistic assessment
• seismic risk

Acknowledgments

The authors also gratefully acknowledge the input provided by Brendon Bradley and the time and efforts of the reviewers.

Additional information

Funding

This research has been partially supported by QuakeCoRE funding and the RNC project which the authors gratefully acknowledge. This is QuakeCoRE publication number 0453.