Chapter 2. Earthquake Design and Evaluation Criteria

DOE-STD-1020-2002

Chapter 2

Earthquake Design and Evaluation Criteria

2.1

Introduction

This chapter describes requirements for the design or evaluation of all classes (i.e. safety

class, safety significant) of structures, systems, and components (SSCs) comprising DOE

facilities for earthquake ground shaking. These classes of SSCs include safety class and safety

significant SSCs per DOE-STD-3009-94 (Ref. 1-6) and all SSCs per the International Building

Code 2000 (IBC 2000) and other codes with seismic provisions comparable to NEHRP

provisions. This material deals with how to establish Design/Evaluation Basis Earthquake

(DBE) loads on various classes of SSCs; how to evaluate the response of SSCs to these loads;

and how to determine whether that response is acceptable. This chapter also covers the

importance of design details and quality assurance to earthquake safety. These earthquake

design and evaluation provisions are equally applicable to buildings and to items contained

within the building, such as equipment and distribution systems. These provisions are intended

to cover all classes of SSCs for both new construction and existing facilities. These design and

evaluation criteria have been developed such that the target performance goals listed in

Appendices B and C are achieved. For more explanation see the Commentary (Appendix C)

herein and the Basis Document (Ref. 2-1).

2.2

General Approach for Seismic Design and Evaluation

This section presents the approach upon which the specific seismic force and story drift

provisions (as applicable) for seismic design and evaluation of structures, systems, and

components in each Performance Category (as described in Section 2.3) is based. These

provisions include the following steps:

Selection of earthquake loading

Evaluation of earthquake response

Specification of seismic capacity and applicable drift limits, (acceptance

criteria)

Ductile detailing requirements for buildings

It is important to note that the above four elements taken together comprise the

earthquake design and evaluation criteria. Acceptable performance (i.e., achieving performance

goals) can only be reached by consistent specification of all design criteria elements as shown in

Figure 2-1. In order to achieve the target performance goals, these seismic design and evaluation

criteria specify seismic loading in probabilistic terms. The remaining elements of the criteria

(see Fig. 2-1) are deterministic design rules which are familiar to design engineers and which

have a controlled level of conservatism. This level of conservatism combined with the

specification of seismic loading, leads to performance goal achievement.

2-1