Steel earthquake-resistant constructions - Within the Eurocode 8 context

Structural steels complying with standards are ductile, and this characteristic makes sections, flats and sheets excellent a priori for building stable structures in seismic zones, as these steel products can achieve high energy dissipation in a variety of deformation patterns.

Observations made after major earthquakes generally confirm the seismic effectiveness of steel constructions, but there are exceptions. The Northridge (USA) earthquake in 1994 and the Kobe (Japan) earthquake in 1995, for example, led to extensive local cracking in some buildings. The metallic nature of a building is not necessarily synonymous with seismic-resistant quality, and only well-considered options can ensure the desired ductile overall behavior.

The construction project should encourage the formation of healthy dissipative zones where local ductile deformations can develop, and these should occur at selected locations. This will be achieved by respecting specific rules relating to materials, elements and assemblies, as well as by applying hierarchical criteria, all derived from the general concept of "capacity dimensioning", specific to each type of framework.

These recently developed rules and criteria were not included in the first version of the PS92 rules. They are presented here in the context of the formulation adopted in Eurocode 8, the seismic code in force throughout Europe in 2011. In the text that follows, we have chosen to retain the symbols used in the French version of Eurocode 8, which sometimes include clues in English terminology.

The appearance of steel-concrete composite structures is covered in [C 2 569] .