Failure Mechanism And Its Control of Building Structures Under Earthquakes Based On Structural System Concept

By taking building structures as systems, the difference between the safety margins of a structure and that of its element is clarified and the robustness of the structure to resist unexpected disasters is discussed. The system concept is further used to introduce the concepts of importance levels and functionality levels in structural systems, the designability of structural systems is then pointed out. The local and global failure mechanisms of building structures under earthquake are summarized, and the failure mechanism control method is discussed based on the concepts of system and designability. For global failure mechanism, the desirable seismic performance is put forward, and at last some practical methods to control the seismic failure mechanism and the failure procedures are proposed based on the hierarchy concept of the structural system.