Seismic design of beam-through steel frames with self-centering modular panels

The beam-through steel frames with self-centering modular panels (BTSF-SCMPs) have been developed as a resilient lateral load resisting system that can address some drawbacks of conventional self-centering systems such as unusual field construction of onsite posttensioning and incompatible deformations relative to gravity framing. This paper outlines a proposed seismic design procedure for this new structural system aiming at achieving specified performance objectives. The design of gravity framing and the lateral load resisting system is decomposed. Different versions of SCMPs with different recentering stiffness are designed independently from other structural components, and are only determined by the dimension and recentering demand of the structure. During the design of the lateral load resisting system, designer only needs to select the number and version of the SCMPs for each story. A six-story five-bay planar BTSF-SCMPs frame located in a high seismic zone in China was designed using the proposed design approach. Nonlinear pushover analysis and dynamic analysis using ground motions representing two seismic hazard levels were performed for this prototype building to evaluate the feasibility of the proposed design approach.