Sensitivity of engineering demand parameters as a function of structural typology and assessment method

International audienceFragility curves express the failure probability of a structure, or a critical component, as a function of a seismic intensity measure, for a given failure criterion. The failure criterion is often built as the difference between a structural response and a threshold, which can be either deterministic or probabilistic. Within a probabilistic context, the structural response is a random variable and therefore, it will be subjected to a certain variability mostly depending on the structural typology and the assessment method. When engineers have to make a decision to choose the appropriate engineering demand parameter to consider, they need to know how much sensitive it will be. The study reported in this paper attempts to bring answers to this question. More precisely, the sensitivity of some engineering demand parameters is quantified and discussed as a function of the structural typology (beam-column or wall-based structures) and of the considered assessment method. The final output is a correlation matrix linking (i) the coefficient of variation of specific engineering demand parameters, (ii) the structural typology and (iii) the type of assessment method. © 2019 Elsevier B.V