Hisham Ajmal PC

hishamajmalpc@gmail.com

PERFORMANCE BASED STRUCTURAL DESIGN

First of all, I would like to clarify that performance based design is actually not a case specific to
tall or super-tall buildings as you might have perceived. In fact, ideally there is nothing new when
we call our design to be performance-based except for the coined term and explicit approach of
considering performance while designing structures. Further, performance based design is not a
domain-specific approach for seismic designs only; you can very well apply to ANY design problem
at hand. It is believed so as terms performance-based design and displacement based design are
often used synonymously. To be precise, performance-based design is a general while
displacement-based design is a specific term with taking displacement as performance criterion. I
am sure there are many papers and articles on performance-based seismic design one can easily
find by just googling, therefore, I dont want to discuss it at length. What I see as important is to
highlight the fact that performance-based designs are more engineered design than traditional
one and one can employ it for any design solutions.
It is interesting to note that the codes in its present form itself can be seen as performance-based
since they are surely aimed at providing design solutions to satisfy some performance criteria.
However, these performance criteria are too broad (for example- safety, strength, durability,
design life and alike) and hence we find them implicitly accounting performance while designing.
Another point to highlight is that typically most codes are lagging in integrating time with design
criteria and hence the users find it difficult to see design criteria as performance criteria at the
first hand. This is due to our seeing performance generally as linked to time and in the name of
performance we would prefer to see its variation over time. Interestingly, we pretty easily adopt
performance as time-independent while managing seismic-designs.
If we see bit closely, we will be able to identify a need of classifying structural engineering in a
little different way so as to accommodate performance-based design within it in the light of
present state of wisdom in structural engineering. Typically, we are taught to see structural
engineering issue to be a 2D problem with only two phases involved namely
1. Structural Analysis
2. Structural Design based on Analysis
This 2D approach is sufficient so far since we prefer to absorb everything that is either
unknown/uncertain or not accounted in design in FoS and through conservative design
specifications. However, with modern instrumentation techniques it is very much possible to
monitor (performance) criteria (such as strain levels and its variation, fatigue cycles,
deterioration, displacements, accelerations, mode-shapes, loads and alike) and compare them
with how presently they have been dealt with in designs. This adds a third dimension to traditional
structural engineering and we can call it:
3. Performance Evaluation
This added dimension is useful in identifying suitability of traditional (and even modern) analysis
procedures and empirical relations employed in design and its realness. Further, it can quantify
the deviation from what has been conceptualised while design and realistic behaviour, which we
otherwise conveniently absorb in our conservativeness. Additionally, most of the time designs are
done at element level and hence evaluating the performance at global level employing modern
computational programs and with instrumentation aids may give a realistic picture of
performance.
With adding the third dimension to structural engineering domain precisely makes us able to
understand performance better. The obvious consequent engineering argument will be then to
utilise this better known performance for design purposes. And this necessitates to define a
fourth dimension :

4. Performance-based Design
So, if we see in light of modern day practices in structural engineering, it is rather a 4D problem
and not 2D as we conventionally see it. With more confident descriptions of various performance
criteria available, the future date codes will need them to account explicitly. Please note that the
above is my personal lookout at structural engineering and I hope this is of use.
best regards,
Kunal Kansara