How is collapse risk of RC buildings affected by the angle of seismic incidence?

Despite the undeniable influence of the angle of seismic incidence on seismic demand, limited research has been performed to determine its effect when assessing the probabilistic seismic performance of a structure. Since the ground motion group size has a well-known significant effect on the variability of collapse risk, the joint effect of both the ground motion group size and the angle of seismic incidence on the estimation of collapse risk is investigated. Results show that the two variables have a different effect on the collapse risk estimates, with one affecting the bias in the expected value of the estimates and the other their variability. In order to ensure acceptable levels of variability and bias, practical proposals are made regarding the minimum number of records and angles of seismic incidence that should be considered. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.