Comparative Study of Seismic Standards in South American Countries

The South America possesses regions with very different degree of seismicity. The Western border of the continent is one of the most seismically active regions of the World. This seismicity diminishes in the direction of the Eastern areas of the continent. Due to this, the South American countries located in the Western border of South America possess standards for seismic design since some decades ago. In opposition to this, the Brazilian Standard for seismic design has been only recently published, in 2006. The purpose of this paper is to present a comparative study of the several South American seismic standards, among themselves, and confronted with the American Standard ASCE/SEI 7/10 and the Eurocode 8. This study is focused in some topics considered as critical. A simple building structure is analyzed considering the criteria of the several standards and obtained results are compared. A critical analysis of the different design criteria is also presented.