Comparison of the seismic‐resilient design of seismically isolated reinforced concrete frame structures using two codes

Summary Resilience‐based seismic design of buildings using seismic isolation has become a critical issue. Currently, there are two design codes for isolated structures in China, exhibiting significant differences. It is critical to investigate the resilience‐based design of isolated buildings using these codes. Hence, using reinforced concrete (RC) frame buildings as an example, two groups of buildings with different heights were designed to achieve the lower limit of seismic performance given in two codes. Although different requirements for acceptable isolation efficiency control this design, the seismic resilience levels were assessed to be Level 2 for all cases. The controlling index is the total repair time, which is dominated by the maximum inter‐story drift ratio (MIDR). Meanwhile, significant differences in design results and resilience performance between two codes were identified. Subsequently, the highest resilience performance (i.e., Level 3) oriented optimization was conducted, and the correspondingly designed schemes using two codes were compared; it was identified that the MIDR of the superstructure requires controlling to approximately 0.23% for such a design using both codes, and the differences between two codes became negligible. The research outcome will assist in providing a useful reference for the seismic‐resilient design of base‐isolated RC frame structures.