A performance-based design framework for the integrated collapse and non-collapse assessment of wind excited buildings

Current prescriptive design provisions are moving towards performance-based design approaches in which system-level probabilistic measures are used to explicitly describe performance. While earthquake engineering has embraced these changes over the last few decades, the same cannot be said for wind engineering where design provisions have remained predominantly prescriptive. The significant wind related economic losses incurred each year around the world has spurred strong interest in developing general performance-based wind engineering frameworks. To this end, this paper presents a simulation-based framework for multistory wind excited buildings that rigorously integrates system-level estimates of both collapse and non-collapse losses. In particular, it is proposed to use the theory of dynamic shakedown as an efficient means for describing the collapse probability of the main wind force resisting system. The practicality and potential of the proposed framework is illustrated on a full scale case study.