Seismosoft | Earthquake Engineering Solutions

Hi,
seismostruct is ok fot THA analysis but I have some problems with Pushover analysis in seismostruct that is associated with hinge definition.

consider a simple beam element with elastic element with two plastic hinges at two ends. in pushover analysis the stage of "unloading" does not exist.you know that we push the structure until a pre defined roof displacement to be obtained. Fema 356 implies that plastic hinge loses a large amount of "strength" in an specified stage of loading and continues to carry the load with a lower "strength" and with a limited stiffness unitil it reaches the failure point. in seismostruct we cant define such links to "lose strength" is an satge of load or to fail to load carrying while other elements are working simulteneously.
how can we deal with these limitations?

The behaviour that you have described above is produced automatically by seimsostruct if you define the proper material models for concrete and steel, and run pushover analysis with response control.

Mortezarazi,

Complementing the response of 'at.farantos'; when assessing the seismic vulnerability of a structure using FEMA-356, you do not necessarily need to make use of the simplified multi-linear plastic-hinge response curves suggested in FEMA-356, but you may rather make use of SeismoStruct's fibre modelling, which will provide with a much more realistic modelling of the post-peak softening response that you are interested in.

The recent Blind Prediction successes of SeismoStruct (http://www.seismosoft.com/en/News_Detai ... ID_News=42) confirm the superiority of such fibre modelling options, hence we would disagree with your use above of the term "limitations".

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