Ductility, Performance and Construction Cost of R/C Buildings Designed to Eurocode 8

This paper evaluates three, regular and irregular, reinforced concrete (RC) buildings designed to Eurocode 8 (EC8) for a peak ground acceleration ranging from 0.16- 0.36g in terms of their respective seismic performance and construction cost as a function of their Ductility Class. The structures are alternatively designed for two classes of medium and high ductility (DCM and DCH) and two values of the behaviour factor q (qmin, qmax). The structural, non-structural and overall construction cost is comparatively assessed and the performance of the alternative designs is further assessed through nonlinear static (i.e., pushover) analysis according to EC8-Part 3. It is shown that the decisions made on the Ductility Class adopted have higher financial impact on irregular buildings, however, this influence is smoothed in terms of total construction cost. It is also shown that the building performance is primarily affected by the decisions made regarding the behaviour factor used in design and to a lesser extent on the Ductility Class itself.