Abstract
Since the execution of structural design by professional structural engineers is not mandatory for small-size buildings in Korea, structural design is conducted by architects or contractors resulting in concern about the seismic safety of the buildings. Therefore, the Korean Structural Engineers Association proposed dedicated structural design criteria in 2012. The criteria were developed based on a deterministic approach in which the structural members are designed only with information of story and span length of the buildings and without structural analyses. However, due to the short time devoted to their development, these criteria miss satisfactory basis and do not deal with structural walls popularly used in Korea. Accordingly, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport launched a research on the 'development of structural performance enhancement technologies for small-size buildings against earthquakes and climate changes'.. As part of this research, this paper intends to establish direction for the preparation of deterministic structural design guidelines for seismic safety of domestic small-size reinforced concrete buildings. To that goal, a typical plan of these buildings is selected considering frames only and frames plus walls, and then design is conducted by changing the number of stories and span length. Next, the seismic performance is analyzed by nonlinear static pushover analysis. The results show that the structural design guidelines should be developed by classifying frames only and frames plus walls. The size and reinforcement of structural elements should be provided in the middle level of the current Korean Building Code and criteria for small buildings by considering story and span length for buildings with frames only, and determined by considering the shape and location of walls and the story and span length as well for buildings with frames plus walls. It is recommended that the design of walls should be conducted by reducing the amount of walls along with symmetrically located walls.
