FLOOR ACCELERATIONS IN NON-STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS

The design and analysis of non-structural elements is an issue within structural engineering that is often underestimated. However, after an earthquake, the cost of damage to non-structural elements plus the cost of building's stoppage can be much higher than the cost of the main structure. There are two types of non-structural elements: those that are sensitive to floor drifts and those that are sensitive to floor accelerations. Although the importance of non-structural elements has been determined, few codes give a procedure to design them. The Unidense state code, Asce7-10, gives a methodology to design non-structural elements sensitive to floor accelerations. However, this method is very simple and among other things does not differentiate accelerations in non-structural elements between different structural systems and does not consider the inelasticity of the structure that supports non-structural elements. This research studies flat accelerations in non-structural elements in two different structural systems. First, accelerations in buildings with special steel frames are obtained and then compared to accelerations obtained in buildings with restricted buckling braces. For this study, non-lineal dynamic analysis will be executed for which sophisticated mathematical models will be considered that include all inelatestics that can be developed when the structure is subjected to an earthquake.

OUTSIDE THE CALL FOR PROPOSALS INTERNAL FUNDS