Seismic Retrofit of RC Buildings Using Metal Shear Panels

The application of damped bracing systems is seriously limited by the lack of a standardized design procedure. The traditional methods appropriate for conventional structures (such as the use of a behaviour factor) become worthless. On the other side, the nonlinear response history analysis is complex and computationally demanding and its implementation is generally avoided in current practice. In this paper, an appropriate design methodology is developed to design the metal shear panels in relation to the structural capacity of the RC building. The metal shear panels are designed such that the distributions of drift angle and ductility demand of the retrofitted building become uniform, although those of the existing RC building may be non-uniform. In order to prove the effectiveness of the design procedure, a three-dimensional RC framed building is considered in the analysis. The reliability of the proposed procedure is finally checked by evaluating the nonlinear response of the building under earthquake strong ground motions.