Seismic performance evaluation procedure of asymmetric plan structures

Plan asymmetry leads to lateral-rotational coupled effects on structural response characteristics.This investigation deals with a simplified method for performance estimation of structures with asymmetric plan.By taking the eccentric characteristics of structures into account,an equivalent triple-degree of freedom (ETDOF) system,which is constructed by eccentric mass,rigid links and springs,is proposed.The modal pushover analysis (MPA) method for asymmetric plan structures is proposed.The target displacement is determined by constant strength spectrum.The applicability of proposed method is discussed.A generic mass eccentric 4-story steel frame is analyzed by the proposed MPA procedure and nonlinear time history analysis ( NTHA ).The results show that the maximum deformation obtained from MPA has a good agreement with the NTHA results.The proposed MPA procedure is reliable and effective for evaluating the performance of asymmetric plan structures.