DOE (Department of Energy) natural phenomena guidelines earthquake design and evaluation

Design and evaluation guidelines for DOE (Department of Energy) facilities subjected to earthquake, wind/tornado, and flood have been developed. This paper describes the philosophy and procedures fr the design or evaluation of facilities for earthquake ground shaking. The guidelines are intended to meet probabilistic-based performance goals expressed in terms of annual probability of exceedance of some level of structural damage. Meeting performance goals can be accomplished by specifying hazard probabilities of exceedance along with seismic behavior evaluation procedures in which the level of conservatism introduced is controlled such that desired performance can be achieved. Limited inelastic behavior is permitted by permitting demand determined from elastic response spectrum analyses to exceed capacity by an allowable inelastic demand-capacity ratio specified in the guidelines for different materials and construction