Key Points and Pending Issues in the Energy-Based Seismic Design Approach

Since the pioneering works conducted by Housner in the 1960s, energy-based seismic design (EBD) has evolved thanks to many researchers. Notwithstanding, it is overshadowed by the force-based design (FBD) approach, and its implementation in seismic codes is currently limited to structures with energy dissipation systems in Japan. The “Vision 2000” report on future design codes identified EBD as a most promising approach towards the paradigm of performance-based design, however. This paper revises key aspects of EBD, particularly how it differs from FBD and displacement-based design (DBD). Important issues to be addressed in the future so as to implement EBD in the seismic design of conventional structures are underlined. New relations between cumulative energy dissipation and maximum displacement for two different restoring force rules—and for two types of ground motions (with and without pulses)—are presented. Furthermore, a simple means of determining the design-value of the ultimate energy dissipation capacity of non-degrading steel components is put forth.