Seismic Performance and Evaluation of Controlled Spine Frames Applied in High-rise Buildings

A controlled spine frame system consists of moment frames and spine frames with concentrated energy-dissipating members. This system guarantees the continuous usability of buildings against Japanese Level-2 earthquake events (similar to DBE events in California), and the authors have confirmed its excellent performance in preventing damage concentration in low-rise buildings. This study further investigates the effect of diverse structural properties on the seismic performance of controlled spine frames applied in high-rise buildings. The effect of building height, yield drift of dampers, spine-to-moment frame stiffness ratio, and damper-to-moment frame stiffness ratio are illustrated in detail, and optimal values are discussed. Also, a segmented spine frame system is proposed for high-rise buildings. The simple evaluation procedure proposed by the authors for low-rise buildings, based on equivalent linearization techniques and response spectrum analyses, was modified to include higher-mode effects for high-rise buildings based on modal analysis. The modified evaluation method was verified by modal pushover and time-history analyses.