The
concept of designing structures to achieve a specified performance limit state
defined by strain or drift limits is now well established. In particular, the
direct displacement-based design approach has been developed for many structural
systems, including frames, cantilevers and coupled walls, dual systems,
bridges, wharves, timber structures and seismically isolated structures. This
paper investigates the performance of a simplified displacement-based design
approach for concentrically braced frame (CBF) systems during earthquakes. The performance
of the trial DBD methodology is gauged through comparison of design values with
experimental results obtained from a series of shake table tests on steel
braced frames. The performance of non-linear time-history analyses to assess the
response of the braced frames is also presented. The results highlight the need
for specific equivalent viscous damping expressions for the DBD of CBF systems
and also demonstrate that non-linear time-history analysis techniques should be
developed further, to better predict the displacement response of CBF systems.