Elastic Seismic Design of Steel High-rise Buildings in Regions of Strong Wind and Moderate Seismicity

Lateral loading due to wind or earthquake is a major factor that affects the design of high-rise buildings. This paper highlights the problems associated with the seismic design of high-rise buildings in regions of strong wind and moderate seismicity. Seismic response analysis and performance evaluation were conducted for wind-designed concentrically braced steel high-rise buildings in order to check the feasibility of designing them per elastic seismic design criterion (or strength and stiffness solution) in such regions. Review of wind design and pushover analysis results indicated that wind-designed high-rise buildings possess significantly increased elastic seismic capacity due to the overstrength resulting from the wind serviceability criterion. The strength demand-to-capacity study showed that, due to the wind design overstrength, high-rise buildings with a slenderness ratio of larger than four or five can elastically withstand even the maximum considered earthquake (MCE) with the seismic performance level of immediate occupancy under the limited conditions of this study. A step-by-step seismic design procedure per the elastic criterion that is directly usable for practicing design engineers is also recommended