In this study, alternative seismic force-resisting systems for plant structure supporting equipment were designed, and the seismic performance thereof was compared using nonlinear dynamic analysis. One alternative seismic force-resisting system was designed per the requirement for ordinary moment-resisting and concentrically braced frames but with a reduced base shear. The other seismic force-resisting system was designed by accommodating seismic details of intermediate and unique moment-resisting frames and special concentrically braced frames. Different plastic hinge models were applied to ordinary and ductile systems based on the validation using existing test results. The control model obtained by code-based flexible design and/or reduction of base shear did not satisfy the seismic performance objectives, but the alternative structural system did by strengthened panel zones and a reduced effective buckling length. The seismic force to equipment calculated from the nonlinear dynamic analysis was significantly lower than the equivalent static force of KDS 41 17 00. The comparison of design alternatives showed that the seismic performance required for a plant structure could be secured economically by using performance-based design and alternative seismic-force resisting systems adopting minimally modified seismic details.

Based on the nonlinear static analysis and the approximate seismic evaluation method adopted in “Guidelines for seismic performance evaluation for existing buildings, two methods to calculate strength demand for retrofitting individual structural walls in unreinforced masonry buildings are proposed.” The displacement coefficient method to determine displacement demand from nonlinear static analysis results is used for the inverse calculation of overall strength demand required to reduce the displacement demand to a target value meeting the performance objective of the unreinforced masonry building to retrofit. A preliminary seismic evaluation method to screen out vulnerable buildings, of which detailed evaluation is necessary, is utilized to calculate overall strength demand without structural analysis based on the difference between the seismic demand and capacity. A system modification factor is introduced to the preliminary seismic evaluation method to reduce the strength demand considering inelastic deformation. The overall strength demand is distributed to the structural walls to retrofit based on the wall stiffness, including the remaining walls or otherwise. Four detached residential houses are modeled and analyzed using the nonlinear static and preliminary evaluation procedures to examine the proposed method.