STEEL WEIGHT AND STRUCTURAL SEISMIC PROPERTIES OF SUPERIOR DESIGN SOLUTIONS OF STEEL BUILDINGS WITH DIFFERENT SIZES AND OCCUPANCIES

This paper discusses usefulness of evaluating relationships between the seismic demand and optimized steel weight. The influences of structural design conditions to the structural properties of the buildings are numerically investigated by comparative evaluation of superior design solutions (SDSs). SDSs are rational structural design solutions, which satisfy practical structural design constraints with minimized steel weight using the multiple start local search method. The steel weight in SDSs was quantitatively evaluated for different building sizes, occupancies, structural systems and the seismic demand. Major findings include the fact that steel weight in higher buildings is less influenced by the seismic demand.