Simplified Procedures for Earthquake Analysis of Buildings

Recognizing that the earthquake response of many buildings can be estimated by considering only the first two vibration modes in the response spectrum analysis (RSA) procedure a simplified response spectrum analysis (SRSA) procedure is presented. The SRSA method should be very useful in practical application because, although much simpler than the RSA method, it provides very similar estimates of design forces for many buildings. With the development of the SRSA, a hierarchy of four analysis procedures to determine the earthquake forces are available to the building designer: code‐type procedure, SRSA, RSA, and RHA (response history analysis). The criteria presented to evaluate the results from each procedure and to decide whether it is necessary to improve results by proceeding to the next procedure in the hierarchy use all the preceding computations and are, therefore, convenient.