An investigation on the accuracy of pushover analysis for estimating the seismic deformation of braced steel frames

This paper investigates the potentialities of the pushover analysis to estimate the seismic deformation demands of concentrically braced steel frames. Reliability of the pushover analysis has been verified by conducting nonlinear dynamic analysis on 5, 10 and 15 story frames subjected to 15 synthetic earthquake records representing a design spectrum. It is shown that pushover analysis with predetermined lateral load pattern provides questionable estimates of inter-story drift. To overcome this inadequacy, a simplified analytical model for seismic response prediction of concentrically braced frames is proposed. In this approach, a multistory frame is reduced to an equivalent shear-building model by performing a pushover analysis. A conventional shear-building model has been modified by introducing supplementary springs to account for flexural displacements in addition to shear displacements. It is shown that modified shear-building models have a better estimation of the nonlinear dynamic response of real framed structures compared to nonlinear static procedures.