SEU, a program provided by SE Solutions, LLC

Determining Seismic Factors for Combined Framing Systems

When you are using a combination of different framing systems in one direction of a building, do you struggle with which factors should be used for seismic design? If you have a braced frame with a shear wall below, should the same R, Cd, and Ωo values be used at each floor?

During the November 2015 SE University session, Clarifying Frequently Misunderstood Seismic Provisions, Emily Guglielmo, SE, from Martin/Martin Inc., reviewed these seismic factors, and what the code says about how these values can change over the height of a structure. She also discussed differences in how these factors are treated between the ASCE 7-05 and ASCE 7-10 codes. The following video clip includes 3 examples to show how the R, Cd, and Ωo values are determined when a building has different framing systems in the same direction.