| The New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ) located in the central United States (US) represents a hazard to human life and infrastructure in major cities in this region, such as Memphis, Tennessee. However, Shelby county and the city of Memphis allow the use of building codes with low seismic provisions as a way to lower the design burden among engineers in the area. Therefore, it is necessary to assess the seismic vulnerability of structures in this region to predict potential damages and estimate economic losses for future seismic events. Currently, the amount of research done on the performance of high-rise structures is limited.;A fifteen-story Reinforced Concrete (RC) moment frame and shear wall building was designed according to three different seismic code requirements as adopted by the Shelby County Code Enforcement Office. These codes include the widely used International Building Code (IBC) 2003 edition, the Memphis and Shelby County locally amended version of the IBC 2003, and the Standard Building Code (SBC) 1999 edition. Based on the seismic provisions of the IBC 2003 and SBC 1999, the building would require special moment frames (SMF), while the locally amended IBC requires only the use of ordinary moment frames (OMF).;Analytical models using a structural analysis program were developed to perform simulations on the structures. Nonlinear static (pushover) and nonlinear dynamic analyses were performed using synthetic ground motions for 10 percent and 2 percent probability of exceedance in 50 years. Fragility curves were developed for each of the three structures, and the results were used to demonstrate the impact of the code requirements on the performance of the structures. In addition, the fragility estimates at the global level for high-rise buildings were compared to those of low- and mid-rise buildings from literature.;It was determined from the analytical results that the seismic performance of the structure designed under the requirements of the amended IBC code was slightly lower than that of the other case studies. Due to the selected structural system, the performance of the high-rise case studies was comparably higher than that of typical RC moment frame low- and mid-rise buildings. |
