Seismic Design Optimization of Steel Building Frameworks

Lei Xu, M.ASCE1; Yanglin Gong, M.ASCE2; and Donald E. Grierson, M.ASCE3

Abstract: This paper presents a multicriteria optimization method for the performance-based seismic design of steel building frameworks
under 共equivalent static兲 seismic loading. Minimizing structural cost 共interpreted as structural weight兲 is taken as one objective. The other
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objective concerns minimizing earthquake damage which, since uniform postelastic ductility demand over all stories generally avoids
local weak-story collapse, is interpreted as providing a uniform interstory drift distribution over the height of the building. That is, the
overall objective for the design of a building framework is to have minimum structural weight and uniform plastic ductility demand while,
at the same time, meeting displacement and strength constraints corresponding to the various performance levels. Explicit forms of the
objective functions and constraints in terms of member sizing variables are formulated to enable computer solution for the optimization
model. The concepts are illustrated for three-story and nine-story steel building frame examples.
DOI: 10.1061/共ASCE兲0733-9445共2006兲132:2共277兲
CE Database subject headings: Steel frames; Seismic design; Optimization; Nonlinear analysis.

Introduction
Experience in recent California earthquakes, including the 1989
Loma Prieta and 1994 Northridge events, indicates that modern
design code provisions in zones of high seismicity are relatively
reliable in avoiding life-threatening building damage. However,
the economic losses associated with these earthquakes were un-
acceptably large, as many structures were found with damage that
was too costly to repair. As a result, higher-performance levels
with the ability to limit property and business interruption losses
need be developed and implemented. This new requirement
for better performance has led to the development of the
performance-based seismic design methodology.
A design performance level is a statement of the desired be-
havior of the building, should it experience an earthquake of
specified severity. Building performance is a combination of the
performance of both structural and nonstructural components.
There are a number of structural performance levels 共or particular
damage states兲 defined in the literature; e.g., three such levels are
FEMA-273 共FEMA 1997兲: immediate occupancy 共IO兲, life safety
共LS兲, and collapse prevention 共CP兲. A structure at the IO level has
sustained minimal or no damage to its structural elements, and is
safe to be reoccupied immediately following the earthquake. A
structure at the LS level has experienced extensive damage and,
1
Associate Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Univ. of Waterloo,
Waterloo, Ontario Canada N2L 3G1 共corresponding author兲. E-mail:
lxu@uwaterloo.ca
2
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Lakehead Univ.,
Thunder Bay, Ontario Canada P7B 5E1.
3
Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Univ. of Waterloo, Waterloo,
Ontario Canada N2L 3G1.
Note. Associate Editor: Christopher M. Foley. Discussion open until
July 1, 2006. Separate discussions must be submitted for individual pa-
pers. To extend the closing date by one month, a written request must be
filed with the ASCE Managing Editor. The manuscript for this paper was
submitted for review and possible publication on April 13, 2004; ap-
proved on May 3, 2005. This paper is part of the Journal of Structural
Engineering, Vol. 132, No. 2, February 1, 2006. ©ASCE, ISSN 0733-
9445/2006/2-277–286/$25.00.
while the risk to life is low, repairs may be required before reoc-
cupancy can occur. The CP level is when a building has reached a
state of impending partial or total collapse, where the structure
has suffered a significant loss of lateral strength and stiffness with
large permanent lateral deformation, but the major components of
the gravity load carrying system should still continue to carry
gravity load demands.
The above descriptions of structural performance are in quali-
tative terms, and are only meaningful to provide owners with a
basis for selecting among building performance alternatives. For
design engineers, the descriptions are typically further quantified
in terms of structural performance parameters, such as roof drift,
interstory drift, plastic rotation, and strength capacity.
With the emergence of the performance-based design method-
ology, there is a need to develop corresponding analytical meth-
ods. Among a number of analysis types, equivalent-static push-
over analysis is often viewed as a viable and attractive method
because of its simplicity and ability to estimate component and
system deformation demands with acceptable accuracy without
the need to conduct full dynamic-response analysis 共FEMA 1997;
Krawinkler and Seneviratna 1998; Chopra and Goel 2002兲. The
essential feature of pushover analysis is a nonlinear procedure in
which monotonically increasing lateral loads along with constant
gravity loads are applied to a framework until a control node
共usually referred to as the building roof兲 sways to a predefined
“target” lateral displacement that corresponds to a performance
level.
Performance-based design is an iterative procedure, in which
the initial design is modified repeatedly through the results of
analysis to meet code- or designer-specified requirements. The
analysis should take into account both geometric and material
nonlinearity at multiple performance 共loading兲 levels, and can in-
volve significant computational effort. In fact, the design optimi-
zation of building frameworks using pushover analysis to account
for the effects of seismic loading can be extremely computation-
ally intensive, and much research is yet ongoing to establish the
means to efficiently incorporate pushover analysis together with
optimal performance-based design. Ganzeri et al. 共2000兲 were the
first to incorporate pushover analysis and the performance-based
design concept in the design optimization of reinforced concrete

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J. Struct. Eng. 2006.132:277-286.

 structures. In their paper, the design objective to be minimized
was formulated in terms of the material cost of the structure, and
was constrained by limiting the plastic rotations at the ends of the
structural members. However, only the IO performance level was
explicitly considered in the design, while the LS and CP levels
were checked by a final pushover analysis. Further, constraints
were not explicitly formulated and no sensitivity information was
provided. Foley and Schinler 共2003兲 presented a design method-
ology for partially and fully restrained steel frames using an evo-
lutionary algorithm. A nonlinear distributed-plasticity analysis
technique was used to evaluate structural response under gravita-
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tional and wind loads. The design objective to minimize structure
weight was written as a summation of column weights and modi-
fied beam weights. Design constraints included member end
rotation, interstory drift, vertical beam deflection, percentage of
cross-section yielding, flange and web slenderness, unbraced
length for columns, and shape constraints. Chan and Zou 共2004兲
proposed an optimization algorithm for reinforced concrete struc-
tures under earthquake loads. They decomposed the design pro-
cess into two single-criterion phases. The first phase involved an
elastic design optimization in which the cost of concrete is mini-
mized subject to elastic spectral displacement constraints due to a
minor earthquake. The second phase involved minimizing the
cost of steel reinforcement subject to constraints on inelastic dis-
placements. Pushover analysis was performed based on the as-
sumption that the fundamental mode of vibration was the pre-
dominate response. Though not directly concerning performance-
based design, other structural optimization studies involving
nonlinear analysis can be found in works by Bhatti et al. 共1979兲,
Bhatti and Pister 共1981兲, Haftka 共1989兲, Wu and Arora 共1987兲,
Jao and Arora 共1993兲, Xu and Grierson 共1993兲, and Xu et al.
共1995兲.
This paper develops a computer-automated design method for
the optimum design of rigid or fully restrained steel moment
frameworks under 共equivalent static兲 seismic loading. A newly
developed pushover analysis technique 共Hasan et al. 2002; Gong
2003兲 is employed to evaluate seismic demands at various perfor-
mance levels. Newly developed sensitivity analysis techniques
共Gong 2003; Gong et al. 2005兲 are employed to establish gradient
information that permits the design problem to be explicitly for-
mulated in terms of member sizing variables. The generalized
optimality criteria algorithm DUAL is used to carry out the
computer-based design optimization procedure 共Fluery 1979兲.
Three-story and nine-story moment frames are designed to illus-
trate the developed methodology.
Design Problem Formulation
Objective Criteria
An objective criterion, often known as a cost or performance
function, is expressed in terms of the design variables and serves
as a decision motivator. Two objective criteria concerning struc-
ture cost and structural damage are identified for this study.
Minimum structural cost is perhaps the most favorable objec-
tive of a design and is universally adopted for many optimization
problems. Some studies 共Walker 1977; Wen and Kang 1998兲 have
been conducted to develop a general building cost function. Un-
fortunately, a complete description of the real cost of a building
before its construction is often nearly impossible because accurate
cost data require information from many design disciplines, and
many factors that influence the cost are unpredictable and not
278 / JOURNAL OF STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING © ASCE / FEBRUARY 2006
J. Struct. Eng. 2006.132:277-286.
precisely defined. As the mathematical formulation of a meaning-
ful cost function in a truly broad context is virtually impossible to
achieve for a structural framing system considered in isolation, as
herein, the cost of the members of the structure is alone taken to
define the explicit cost objective function for this study 共while
structural fabrication and erection costs are implicitly considered
in the design process through a member grouping technique,
illustrated by the design examples兲. Assuming that the cost of a
member is proportional to its material weight, the least-cost
design can be interpreted as the least-weight design of the struc-
ture, and the cost objective function f 1 共also called the weight
objective兲 to be minimized can be formulated as
冒
n
f 1共x兲 = 兺
j=1
␳L jA j Wmax 共1兲
where x = generic representation of the vector of design variables;
n = number of members; L j and A j = length and cross-section area
of the jth member, respectively; and ␳ = material density. The
function f 1 is normalized by the maximum possible weight of the
frame Wmax, which is calculated as Wmax = ⌺␳L jAUj , where
AUj = upper-bound cross section area for member j.
In addition to minimizing the structure cost, minimizing the
damage to the building superstructure under earthquake loading is
another favorable 共perhaps more desirable兲 design objective.
Here, it is required to quantitatively formulate structural damage
in terms of structural response. One way to quantify the degree of
damage to a building framework is to establish the relationship
between interstory drift and damage. Interstory drift is the pri-
mary parameter in evaluating structural performance 共FEMA
2000兲, and is widely regarded as a major parameter characterizing
the extent of plastic deformation of a building. It is necessary to
only consider the plastic interstory drift distribution at extreme
performance levels, such as the CP level 共see “Examples”兲, since
structural damage in the elastic range of structure response is of
minor consequence 共the same cannot be said concerning non-
structural damage, which is not considered by this study兲. It has
been observed in many collapsed structures that deformation con-
centration took place at a soft 共or weak兲 story under severe earth-
quake loading, which directly led to building failure. It is reason-
able to assume that the structure will undergo less damage if this
deformation concentration can be mitigated; i.e., that less damage
will occur if the structure exhibits a uniform interstory drift dis-
tribution when undergoing significant plasticity, since minimum
plastic deformation concentration occurs when all the stories of a
building have the same interstory drift. Thus, the damage-
mitigating objective can be stated as pursuing a uniform interstory
drift distribution since this is equivalent to achieving a uniform
ductility demand in all stories 共Chopra 2001兲. Since a linear story
drift distribution is equivalent to a uniform interstory drift distri-
bution, the structure damage function f 2 to be minimized can be
defined as
再 冎
ns−1 1/2
f 2共x兲 = 共1/ns兲 兺
s=1
关共␯sCP共x兲/⌬CP共x兲兲共H/Hs兲 − 1兴 2
共2兲
where ns= number of stories; Hs and H = distances from the build-
ing ground level to story s and the roof, respectively; while ␯sCP共x兲
and ⌬CP共x兲 = lateral translations of story s and the building roof at
the CP performance level, respectively. In effect, f 2 defines the
coefficient of variation of the lateral translation distribution, since
␯sCP / Hs and ⌬CP / H represent the story-drift ratio and the building
mean-drift ratio, respectively. By definition, the value of f 2共x兲 is
 not less than zero, and only for the extreme case of a perfectly
uniform interstory drift distribution is f 2共x兲 = 0.
Design Variables
For this study, the design variables are taken to be the cross sec-
tion sizes of the members. There are four basic cross-sectional
properties for each member, i.e., the area A, moment of inertia I,
elastic modulus S 共associated with first yield兲, and plastic modu-
lus Z 共associated with full plasticity兲. These four properties for
commercially available standard steel sections can be related to-
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placements of 0.7, 2.5, and 5% of the height of the building are
adopted by this study as the maximum allowable roof drift for the
IO, LS, and CP performance levels, respectively 共FEMA 1997兲.
The allowable interstory drift is also determined by the perfor-
mance level; e.g., the allowable interstory drift of a low building
is taken as 1.25% of the height of the story at the IO level, and
6.1% at the CP level 共FEMA 2000兲.
The interstory and roof drift constraints imposed at each
performance level are expressed as
␦s共x兲 艋 ¯␦ 共s = 1, ¯ ns兲 共6兲

gether through functional relationships which, for this study, are

as expressed as
2
I = C 1A + C 2A + C 3 共3兲
S = C 4A + C 5 共4兲
Z = fs S 共5兲
where C1 – C5 = constants determined by regression analysis
共Gong 2003兲. For a specified type and nominal depth of section,
instantaneous updating of the section properties I, S, and Z is
achieved through Eqs. 共3兲–共5兲 for a given section area A. That is,
having such relationships, the cross-section area A can be taken as
the only design variable, thereby reducing the number of design
variables significantly. Eqs. 共3兲–共5兲 play an important role in the
design automation process since pushover analysis results are
very sensitive to the sectional properties I, S, and Z, which there-
fore need to be estimated as accurately as possible.
For this study, the ultimate purpose is to find the optimal de-
sign for steel frameworks using commercially available sections.
The design process is divided into two phases: Phase I, continu-
ous design stage and Phase II, discrete design stage. The design
¯
⌬共x兲 艋 ⌬ 共7兲
where ␦s = interstory drift of story s 共i.e., ␦s = ␯s − ␯s−1, the
difference between the drift ␯s at story s and the drift ␯s−1 at story
s − 1兲; ¯␦ = allowable inter-story drift; and ⌬ and ⌬
¯ = roof drift and
allowable roof drift, respectively.
Sizing limitations imposed on member cross-section areas are
taken, for this study, as the lower and upper bound values AL and
AU of the section areas A for the type of commercially available
standard steel members specified for the design, i.e.
ALj 艋 A j 艋 AUj 共j = 1,2, . . . ,n兲 共8兲
Design Formulation
From the foregoing, the optimization model can be formulated as
共note that while interstory and roof drift constraints are applied
for all three performance levels IO, LS, and CP, the damage
objective function f 2 applies only for the CP level兲.
Min
f共x兲 = f 1 + f 2

冒
problem is first treated as a continuous optimization problem; n
then, a dynamic rounding-off strategy 共Gong 2003兲 is employed
to size design variables in Phase II. It is assumed that the optimal
= ␻1 兺 ␳L jA j Wmax

再 冎
j=1
discrete solution is in the neighborhood of the optimal continuous
ns−1 1/2
solution. The dynamic rounding-off strategy is a modification of
the simple rounding-off method 共a common approach to select + ␻2 共1/ns兲 兺
s=1
关共␯sCP共x兲/⌬CP共x兲兲共H/Hs兲 − 1兴 2
共9兲
cross sections by rounding up all the sections found from the
continuous optimization solution to their nearest available dis- subject to
crete section size兲. While the simple rounding-off method is direct
and easy to implement, it often results in an infeasible design for ␦si共x兲 艋 ¯␦i 共s = 1, . . . ns; i = IO,LS,CP兲 共10兲
a problem having a large number of variables 共Arora 2000兲. It is
also unnecessary to increase all the variables to their upper dis- ¯i
⌬i共x兲 艋 ⌬ 共i = IO,LS,CP兲 共11兲
crete neighbors. Some of them could be decreased to their lower
neighbor. The dynamic rounding-off strategy rounds up only one ALj 艋 A j 艋 AUj 共j = 1,2, . . . ,n兲 关Phase I兴
or a few variables at a time. The selected variable共s兲 are fixed at
the rounded-up discrete value and the design problem is opti- or
mized again with a reduced set of variables. This process is re-
Aj 苸 aj 关Phase II兴 共12兲
peated until all variables are selected and fixed to discrete values.
where superscript i refers to the ith performance level;
f共x兲 = combined 共weight+ damage兲 objective function; a j = set
Design Constraints
of discrete-section areas available for design; and ␻1 and
The design variables are chosen to satisfy certain specified re- ␻2 = combination factors for the objectives f 1共x兲 and f 2共x兲 from
quirements called design constraints. According to the roles they Eqs. 共1兲 and 共2兲, respectively, which turn the design problem into
play in determining the design variables, the constraints can be a single criterion problem 共note that ␻1 and ␻2 are called “com-
classified as being primary or secondary. The primary constraints bination” factors instead of “weight” factors since their values do
considered in this paper serve to control building drift, including not reflect the relative importance of the two objectives兲.
roof drift and interstory drift. The roof drift is taken to be repre- The normalized structural weight f 1 and the coefficient of varia-
sentative of the lateral translation of the building as a whole, tion of lateral displacements f 2 are two different entities and, as
and the maximum allowable roof drift at each performance level such, the appropriate selection for the values of ␻1 and ␻2
is specified by a “target” displacement. For example, target dis- requires numerical experiments that account not only for how f 1

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J. Struct. Eng. 2006.132:277-286.

 and f 2 are defined and normalized but also for how much the
gradients of the two objectives conflict with each other 共Gong
2003兲.
In Eqs. 共9兲–共12兲, only the f 1共x兲 term of Eq. 共9兲 is an explicit
function of the design variables, while the f 2共x兲 term of Eq. 共9兲
and all drift constraints are implicit functions of the design vari-
ables. In such a case, to enable computer solution of the design
optimization problem, it is necessary to use an approximation
technique to formulate the objective function f 2共x兲 and all drift
constraints explicitly in terms of design variables. High quality
approximations can be obtained by adopting the reciprocal
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variables 共Schmit and Farshi 1974兲,

x j = 1/A j 共13兲
and then employing first-order Taylor series to reformulate Eqs. Fig. 1. Flowchart of proposed design algorithm
共9兲–共12兲 as the explicit design optimization problem:
Min
Design Examples

f共x兲 = ␻1 兺
n

␳L j 冒 共x jWmax兲 Example One

冋 册
j=1
Consider the three-story, four-bay moment frame in Fig. 2 共Gupta
n CP
and Krawinkler 1999; Hasan et al. 2002兲. The framework consists
+ ␻2 共f 2共x兲兲0 + 兺
j=1
共df 2共x兲/dx j兲0共x j − x0j 兲 共14兲 of 27 members. Through member linking, the number of design
variables is reduced to 9, designated as A1 – A9 in Fig. 2. There-
subject to fore, from Eq. 共13兲, there are nine reciprocal design variables
x j = 1 / A j, j = 1 , . . . , 9.
n It remains to employ Eqs. 共3兲–共5兲 to express section properties
关␦si共x兲兴0 + 兺
j=1
关d␦si共x兲/dx j兴0共x j − x0j 兲 艋 ¯␦i I j, S j, and Z j in terms of A j for each of the j = 1 , . . . , 9 design
section groups. To this end, it is first necessary to predetermine
the type and nominal depth of the set of sections from which a
共s = 1, ¯ ns, i = IO,LS,CP兲 共15兲 member design is to be selected. While providing considerable a
priori knowledge to the design automation algorithm, such prede-
n termination is entirely consistent with conventional design prac-
关⌬i共x兲兴0 + 兺
j=1
¯i
关d⌬i共x兲/dx j兴0共x j − x0j 兲 艋 ⌬ 共i = IO,LS,CP兲 tice where a designer generally knows which type of section and
approximate nominal depth is used for a certain type of frame
member. For instance, it is well known that W14 sections are
共16兲
commonly used sections for columns of low to mid-rise steel
frameworks, while W24 to W33 sections are often used for beam
xLj 艋 x j 艋 xUj 共j = 1,2, ¯ ,n兲 关Phase I兴 共17兲 members. A designer normally will check the market for avail-
ability before selecting section types and nominal depths. If a
or reasonable section is not able to be chosen from among the pre-
determined sections to meet the design requirements, the prede-
xj 苸 Xj 共j = 1,2, ¯ ,n兲 关Phase II兴 termined sections are upgraded to a larger available nominal
depth and the member design process is repeated.
where superscript 0 represents values for the current design; xLj For this example, all the column design areas A1 – A6 are pre-
and xUj = lower and upper bounds on the reciprocal area x j, respec- determined to be chosen from among available W14 sections,
tively, where xLj = 1 / AUj and xUj = 1 / ALj ; X j = 1 / a j; and d␦ / dx j, while the beam areas A7, A8, and A9 are to be chosen from among
d⌬ / dx j, and df 2 / dx j = interstory drift, roof drift, and ductility de-
mand derivatives with respect to the design variable x j, respec-
tively. The determination of the foregoing displacement and duc-
tility derivatives, also known as sensitivity coefficients, has been
reported in a companion study by the writers 共Gong et al. 2005兲,
where it is noted that their calculation also involves taking into
account the sensitivity of the lateral seismic loading to changes in
the structure design over the iterative synthesis history.
A generalized optimality criteria algorithm, called the Dual
method 共Fleury 1979; Gong 2003兲, is employed by this study to
solve the optimization problem Eqs. 共14兲–共17兲 to find member
sizes for which structure weight and damage are minimized. The
overall design procedure is illustrated by the flowchart in Fig. 1.
See Gong 共2003兲 for full details of the numerical realization of
the design algorithm. Fig. 2. Example one: three-story four-bay moment frame

280 / JOURNAL OF STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING © ASCE / FEBRUARY 2006

J. Struct. Eng. 2006.132:277-286.

 Table 1. Bounds on Member Sizes and applied to the structure according to the load pattern defined
Type and Cross-section by 共FEMA 1997兲
nominal depth Lower/upper area Ai

冉 冒兺 冊
of members section size 共mm2兲 ns
W14 W14⫻ 22 4,190 Ps = Vb GsHsk GmHmk 共s = 1,2, . . . ,ns兲 共20兲
W14⫻ 808 152,900 m=1
W24 W24⫻ 55 10,450 where W = seismic weight of the structure; g is gravitational
W24⫻ 492 92,900 acceleration; Ps = lateral load applied at story level s; Hs and
W30 W30⫻ 90 17,030 Hm = heights from the base of the building to story levels s and m,
W30⫻ 477 90,320 respectively; Gs and Gm = seismic weights for story levels s and
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W33 W33⫻ 118 22,390
W33⫻ 354 67,100
W36 W36⫻ 136 25,610
W36⫻ 848 160,640
W33, W30, and W24 sections, respectively 共AISC 1994兲. The
corresponding upper-bound section areas given in Table 1, having
material density ␳ = 7,850 kg/ m3 are used to calculate the maxi-
mum weight of the structure as Wmax = 143,136 kg which, in turn,
is used to normalize the weight objective function f 1 关see Eq. 共1兲兴.
Three acceleration design spectra, which represent three dif-
ferent earthquake levels corresponding to 20, 10, and 2% prob-
ability of exceedance in a 50 year period, are taken as the basis
for calculating the 共equivalent static兲 seismic loading for the three
performance levels IO, LS, and CP, respectively. Without loss of
generality, the calculation of the spectral acceleration Sia for each
design spectra i can be expressed as 共FEMA 1997兲
m, respectively; and k = exponent whose value depends on the
period of the building 共k = 2 for this example兲.
The constraint Eq. 共15兲 includes nine interstory drift con-
straints 共i.e., three constraints for each of the IO, LS, and CP
performance levels兲, while Eq. 共16兲 includes three roof drift
constraints 共i.e., one constraint for each performance level兲. The
allowable interstory drifts ¯␦ are taken to be 0.012h, 0.031h, and
0.061h for the IO, LS, and CP levels, respectively, where h is the
height of the story under consideration, 共FEMA 2000兲. The allow-
able roof drifts for the IO, LS, and CP levels are taken to be
0.007H, 0.025H, and 0.05H, respectively 共FEMA 1997兲. The ini-
tial design point is taken to be defined by the maximum available
discrete-section sizes for the design variables, i.e., A01 – A06 are
defined by a W14⫻ 808 section, while A07, A08, and A09 are defined
by W33⫻ 354, W30⫻ 477, and W24⫻ 492 sections, respectively
共see Table 1兲.
For pushover analysis, each beam member is modeled by two
beam elements by considering the midspan point as a potential
plastic hinge location. 关Actually, it was subsequently found that
one element per beam would have been adequate for this 共and the

冦 冧
Ssi共0.4 + 3T/T io兲 0 ⬍ T 艋 0.2T i0 next兲 design example since the applied gravity loads were rela-
Sia = Ssi 0.2T i0 ⬍ T 艋 T i0 共i = IO,LS,CP兲 tively small such that no plastic hinges were formed at the mid-
span of the beams.兴 Each column member is represented by a
Si1/T T⬎T i
0 single beam–column element since axial forces and, hence, P-␦
共18兲 effects are not significant for this 共and the next兲 framework ex-
ample 关when the axial force in a member is less than 40% of the
where T = elastic fundamental period of the structure computed
Euler’s buckling load, modeling a column with but one element
from structural analysis; Ti0 = period at which the constant accel-
will produce reasonably accurate results 共Chan 2001兲兴.
eration and constant velocity regions of the response spectrum
Second-order and combined bending moment and axial force
intersect for the design earthquake associated with performance
effects are accounted for the columns alone 共Hasan et al. 2002兲.
level i; and Ssi and Si1 = corresponding short-period and 1 s period
The expected yield strength of steel material used for column
response acceleration parameters, respectively 共see Table 2兲. As
members is ␴ye = 397 MPa, while ␴ye = 339 MPa for beam mem-
shown by a companion study 共Gong et al. 2005兲, the period
bers 共Gupta and Krawinkler 1999; Hasan et al. 2002兲. For this
T changes during the design iterative process and the sensitivity
example, the objective function combination factors in Eq. 共14兲
of T to changes in the design variables, dT / dx j, is evaluated so as
are taken to be ␻1 = 0.95 and ␻2 = 0.05 共Gong 2003兲.
to facilitate determination of the corresponding sensitivities of
The results of the performance-based design optimization pro-
structural responses.
cess are summarized in Tables 3 and 4. It is observed that the
Having Sia from Eq. 共18兲, the corresponding base shears Vb for
normalized weight of the structure f 1 is decreased from 1.00 at
the IO, LS, and CP levels are then found as
the first cycle to 0.311 at the tenth cycle for the continuous design
stage. At design cycle 10, both the weight objective f 1 and the
Vib = W共Sia/g兲 共i = IO,LS,CP兲 共19兲
damage objective f 2 converge to their optimal 共continuous-
variable兲 values, and the most critical constraint is active with a
response ratio of unity. The previously described dynamic
Table 2. Performance-Level Site Parameters for Design Examples rounding-off strategy is employed to find the optimal discrete-
section design given in the last row of Table 3, for which, from
Performance Earthquake level Ss S1 T0
the last row of Table 4, the normalized weight objective is slightly
level 共prob. exceed./years兲 共g兲 共g兲 共s兲
increased to f 1 = 0.319 共i.e., the optimal discrete-section weight of
IO 20% / 50 0.33 0.24 0.717 the frame is f 1 ⫻ Wmax = 0.319⫻ 143,136= 45,660 kg兲. A final
LS 10% / 50 0.45 0.31 0.690 pushover analysis for this discrete design is conducted and the
CP 2 % / 50 0.70 0.45 0.637 plastic states of the structure corresponding to the LS and CP
Note: IO= immediate occupancy; LS= life safety; CP= collapse performance levels 共i.e., 2.5 and 5% roof drift兲 are found to be as
prevention; prob. exceed./ years= probability of exceedance/years. shown in Figs. 3 and 4, respectively, where the ovals represent

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J. Struct. Eng. 2006.132:277-286.

 Table 3. Example One: Primary Design Variable Results
Cycle A1 A2 A3 A4 A5 A6 A7 A8 A9
index 共mm2兲 共mm2兲 共mm2兲 共mm2兲 共mm2兲 共mm2兲 共mm2兲 共mm2兲 共mm2兲
1 152,900 152,900 152,900 152,900 152,900 152,900 67,100 90,320 92,900
2 93,140 94,400 89,340 94,440 104,800 99,020 45,470 60,512 55,545
3 68,335 65,165 58,595 71,965 82,930 73,660 36,200 46,110 36,910
4 67,440 49,605 42,595 74,970 71,835 59,624 35,095 37,093 26,600
5 61,450 62,340 35,560 71,040 69,845 55,350 34,335 33,755 22,025
6 58,375 40,225 33,780 67,490 66,350 52,585 32,620 32,070 20,920
7 55,460 38,210 32,100 64,115 63,030 49,960 30,985 30,465 19,880
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8 53,240 36,680 30,810 61,550 61,300 48,080 29,750 29,250 19,080

9 50,820 35,020 29,650 58,760 61,180 49,065 29,350 27,920 18,210
10 50,010 34,460 29,860 57,820 61,250 49,850 29,825 27,680 17,870
Discrete 48,770 33,420 33,420 58,970 65,160 48,770 31,930 28,060 17,900
design W14⫻ 257 W14⫻ 176 W14⫻ 176 W14⫻ 311 W14⫻ 342 W14⫻ 257 W33⫻ 169 W30⫻ 148 W24⫻ 94

plastic hinges at the member ends and the digits inside the ovals Example Two
represent the percentage of plastification 共see Hasan et al. 2002兲.
Consider the nine-story framework in Fig. 5 共Hasan et al. 2002兲.
The interstory drift ratios at 5% roof drift are found to be 0.048,
The framework consists of 99 members. Through member link-
0.052, and 0.049 for the first, second, and third story, respec-
ing, the number of design variables is reduced to 18, designated
tively; i.e., at the CP level, the interstory drift distribution is near
as A1 – A18 in Fig. 5. The column design variables A1 – A9 are
uniform and, therefore, the ductility demand is near uniform over
chosen from among available W14 sections, while beams
the height of the building 共see the last column of Table 4 where
A10 – A13, A14, A15 – A16, and A17 – A18 are chosen from among W36,
the coefficient of variation of interstory drift is f 2 = 0.022兲. It is
W33, W30, and W24 sections, respectively. The initial design
seen from Fig. 4 that member plastification takes place somewhat
point is taken to be defined by the maximum available discrete-
uniformly over the structure height when the frame undergoes
section sizes for the design variables. The corresponding upper
nearly uniform interstory drift.
bound section areas are given in Table 1. The maximum weight of
the structure used to normalize the weight objective function is
Wmax = 655,540 kg.
The material strength, design spectra, and allowable roof and
Table 4. Example One: Design History Results
interstory drifts are taken to be the same as those for Example 1.
Roof drift ratio ⌬ / H The load pattern is determined by Eq. 共20兲 using k = 2. The ob-
Critical interstory jective function combination factors in Eq. 共14兲 are taken to be
drift ratio ␻1 = 0.95 and ␻2 = 0.05.
Design ␦s / hs 关at story s兴 Structural Ductility
The optimal design for the framework is given in Table 5 in
cycle weight/Wmaxa demand
index IO LS CP 共f 1兲 共f 2兲 terms of both member cross-section areas A and corresponding
commercial standard section designations. The optimal normal-
1 0.0020 0.0027 0.0042 1.000 0.067 ized value of the weight objective is f 1 = 0.26 共i.e., the optimal
0.0024 关2兴 0.0033 关2兴 0.0051 关2兴 discrete-section weight of the frame is f 1 ⫻ Wmax = 0.26
2 0.0035 0.0047 0.0072 0.639 0.047 ⫻ 655,540= 170,440 kg兲. The optimal value of the damage objec-
0.0040 关2兴 0.0055 关2兴 0.0084 关2兴 tive is f 2 = 0.045 共i.e., the coefficient of variation of interstory drift
3 0.0049 0.0067 0.0151 0.471 0.164 over the structure height兲. The most critical constraint is the roof
0.0056 关2兴 0.0076 关2兴 0.0185 关1兴
drift at the IO level, which is almost active with a response ratio
4 0.0058 0.0078 0.0162 0.402 0.045 of 0.98. The plastic states of the optimal discrete-section design
0.0067 关2兴 0.0089 关2兴 0.0188 关2兴
corresponding to the LS and CP performance levels 共i.e., 2.5
5 0.0063 0.0082 0.0192 0.369 0.037 and 5% roof drift兲 are found to be as shown in Figs. 6 and 7,
0.0070 关2兴 0.0092 关2兴 0.0217 关2兴
6 0.0065 0.0085 0.0238 0.351 0.035
0.0073 关2兴 0.0095 关2兴 0.0270 关2兴
7 0.0067 0.0087 0.0305 0.333 0.037
0.0075 关2兴 0.0098 关2兴 0.0349 关2兴
8 0.0068 0.0089 0.0383 0.320 0.039
0.0077 关3兴 0.0101 关3兴 0.0430 关2兴
9 0.0070 0.0091 0.0471 0.312 0.032
0.0078 关3兴 0.0101 关3兴 0.0518 关2兴
10 0.0070 0.0091 0.0476 0.311 0.026
0.0077 关3兴 0.0101 关3兴 0.0510 关2兴
Discrete 0.0069 0.0090 0.0456 0.319 0.022
design 0.0078 关3兴 0.0102 关3兴 0.0481 关2兴
a
Wmax = 143,136 kg. Fig. 3. Example one: structural plastification at life safety level

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Fig. 4. Example one: structural plastification at collapse prevention

level

respectively. The interstory drift ratios at 5% roof drift are found

to be 0.051, 0.050, 0.048, 0.059, 0.056, 0.059, 0.051, 0.050, and
0.026 from the first to the ninth story, respectively; i.e., the plastic
drift distribution is nearly uniform, except at the ninth story where
the interstory drift is smaller as the columns there experience no
plastification 共see Fig. 7兲. For member plastification taken as a
measure of damage, it is observed from Figs. 6 and 7 that damage
is somewhat uniformly distributed over the first eight stories of
the structure where the frame undergoes nearly uniform interstory Fig. 6. Example two: structural plastification at life safety level
drift, and that damage of the ninth story is confined to roof beams.

structural members in search of a uniform-ductility demand de-

Discussion and Conclusions
The paper has presented a computer-based synthesis methodology
for the performance-based optimal design of steel building frame-
works subject to earthquakes. Pushover analysis is employed to
establish plastic behavior under equivalent-static seismic loading.
The study demonstrates that it is possible to simultaneously ac-
count for multiple performance levels and design such as to re-
duce both structural cost 共weight兲 and damage 共ductility demand兲.
The damage objective defines the coefficient of variation of
interstory drift, and plays the role of allocating material among
sign for the building framework. Two design examples illustrated
the applicability and practicability of the design optimization
method.
While the pushover analysis technique is widely accepted as a
nonlinear procedure capable of evaluating seismic demands with
reasonable accuracy, it has some shortcomings. The pros and cons
of pushover analysis have been well discussed by Krawinkler and
Seneviratna 共1998兲. The major drawback of conventional push-

Fig. 7. Example two: structural plastification at collapse prevention

Fig. 5. Example two: nine-story five-bay moment frame level

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J. Struct. Eng. 2006.132:277-286.

 W14⫻ 370 W14⫻ 233 W14⫻ 211 W14⫻ 159 W14⫻ 455 W14⫻ 342 W14⫻ 311 W14⫻ 257 W14⫻ 159 W36⫻ 210 W36⫻ 182 W36⫻ 182 W36⫻ 170 W33⫻ 152 W30⫻ 148 W30⫻ 116 W24⫻ 94 W24⫻ 62
over analysis is that the pattern of lateral inertial loads is pre-

17,900 11,740
共mm2兲
A18
scribed to be invariant, which implies that seismic demands are
dominated by one vibration mode 共typically the fundamental
共mm2兲 mode兲. Chopra and Goel 共2002兲 have proposed a modal pushover
analysis 共MPA兲 technique accounting for several vibration mode
A17

effects that is a significant improvement over single-mode push-

over analysis. Ongoing research by the writers suggests that this
22,060
共mm2兲

MPA technique is readily implemented for the design optimiza-

A16

tion procedure presented herein 共Grierson et al. 2005兲.

The exponent k value in Eq. 共20兲 is a function of the natural
period of the structure 共FEMA 1997兲. For this study, it is taken as
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28,060
共mm2兲
A15

a fixed value for each design example even though the natural
period changes from one design iteration to the next. This treat-
ment appears to be consistent with current practice employed by
28,840
共mm2兲

the engineering community. For example, using the National

A14

building code of Canada 共NRC 1995兲, the natural period of a

steel moment frame is approximated by an empirical formula
without explicit reference to the actual design of the frame, and
32,260
共mm2兲
A13

the k value is then determined using this estimated period value.

Alternatively, though not done herein, the value of k can be
treated as a variable during the design process since it is a func-
tion of T and the sensitivity of T is already available 共Gong et al.
34,580
共mm2兲
A12

2005兲.
Since stiffness constraints concerning building roof drift and
interstory drift are the primary design requirements considered by
34,580
共mm2兲
A11

this study, the proposed design optimization procedure is most

applicable for steel moment frames in high seismic zones, where
member sectional sizes are almost exclusively determined by drift
requirements 共Foutch and Yun 2002兲. If a few member stress
39,870
共mm2兲
A10

requirements are subsequently found to be violated, often the af-

fected sections can be appropriately resized without the need for a
complete redesign of the structure. Alternatively, though not done
30,130
共mm2兲

herein, it is possible to directly account for strength constraints

A9

concerning stability and stresses explicitly in the design optimi-

zation procedure 共Chan et al. 1995兲.
48,770
共mm2兲

Whether the column base is pinned or fixed does not affect the
A8

optimization algorithm. In fact, when the example structures were

at the collapse prevention performance level, the column bases
were all at almost 100% plastification 共i.e., virtually pinned兲 and
58,960
共mm2兲

the algorithm did not encounter difficulty during any of the design
A7

iterations over the loading history. New research currently under-

way to extend the design automation to steel frameworks with
65,160
共mm2兲

“semirigid” connections also finds this to be true for the case of

A6

initially “partially restrained” column bases.

The strong-column weak-beam 共SC/WB兲 requirement that is
Table 5. Example Two: Discrete-Section Design Results

mandatory for certain steel moment frameworks in seismic zones

86,450
共mm2兲

共FEMA 2000兲 was not included in the design formulation pre-

A5

sented by this study. The SC/WB requirement imposes additional

member-capacity constraints on the design process, and a pilot
30,130
共mm2兲

study has found that such constraints tend to generate an optimal

A4

design having less plastification occurring in column members;

specifically, a heavier-weight structure with reduced likelihood of
a soft or weak story 共Gong 2003兲. Research is currently underway
40,000
共mm2兲

by the writers toward integrating the SC/WB concept into the

A3

design optimization formulation.

44,190
共mm2兲
A2

Acknowledgments
70,320
共mm2兲

This work is sponsored by the National Science and Engineering

Research Council of Canada, and forms part of the PhD research
A1

284 / JOURNAL OF STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING © ASCE / FEBRUARY 2006

J. Struct. Eng. 2006.132:277-286.

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