Comparison of Energy-Based, Force-Based and Displacement-Based Seismic Design Approaches for RC Frames in the Context of 2G of Eurocode 8

The second generation of Eurocode 8 (2G EN1998) considers two main approaches to verify conventional RC bare frames: the force-based approach and the displacement-based approach. In addition, for structures with energy dissipation devices a method based on the energy balance is considered. Although the formulation of the energy-based approach in 2G EN1998 is intended to be used only for structures with energy dissipation systems, it can be easily extended to conventional structures by removing the contribution of the energy dissipation devices and adding few details concerning the calculation of some terms involved in the equations. This paper presents a case study of a RC bare frame designed/verified applying the energy-based methodology and compares the resulting design with that obtained with the force-based and the displacement-based approaches. The response of the structure of the structure dimensioned with the energy-based approach under several ground motions is obtained through non-linear time history analyses and compared with the predictions.