An energy-based approach for nonlinear static analysis of structures

Current codes and guidelines provide different methods to perform nonlinear static analysis of structures that require some non-intuitive assumptions in their application. In the present paper an energy-based method for nonlinear static analysis that allows to overcome these assumptions is proposed. In the method the capacity and the demand are both expressed in terms of energy. An energy capacity curve is computed considering that at each step the work of the lateral forces is equal to the structure internal work. The demand is represented in terms of an energy quantity, defined pseudo-energy, that is computed from both the maximum response displacement and the maximum response force. Constant ductility pseudo-energy spectra are introduced as energy demand design spectra, alternative to the input energy demand spectra. The definition of the performance point does not require iterative procedures for equating the internal dissipated energy to the demand energy. For the direct evaluation of the performance point two different operative procedures are proposed. The proposed method is evaluated comparing the earthquake-induced deformations of single degree-of-freedom systems resulting from the application of the presented nonlinear static analysis procedures with those obtained from the time-history analysis and from the application of the EC8 nonlinear static analysis procedure. The method is also applied in the case of a RC plane frame representing the inner frame of a six story building. The results obtained with the proposed method are in good agreement with those computed using nonlinear dynamic analyses, moreover they are characterized by a better accuracy with respect to the results obtained with the method provided by EC8. © 2014, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.