PARAMETRIC APPROACH IN BIM ENVIRONMENT FOR SEISMIC DESIGN OF NONSTRUCTURAL ELEMENTS

Considerable efforts have been recently made to explore the advantages of using Building Information Modeling in the field of earthquake engineering, and specifically for the seismic assessment and design of nonstructural elements. BIM can greatly enhance the accuracy and practicality of seismic risk assessments by providing structural engineers a digital framework for managing information about the properties of nonstructural elements, such as location, installation details and costs, which are fundamental for their seismic evaluation. The idea of the present work is to explore a further possibility of BIM technology, which is the implementation of parametric modeling that so far has showed great potentials both for structural and architectural design. Parametric modeling can be used to improve the design process by taking advantage of automation. In particular, the connections’ layout and dimensions of nonstructural elements can be seismically designed according to the chosen reference code through an automated procedure. This approach to nonstructural design allows architects, interior designers, or engineers to immediately evaluate feasibility and effects of their design choices without iterative interactions with the structural designer. Moreover, a parametric approach can solve the problem of integrated design of multiple types of nonstructural elements whose connections to the structure can geometrically interfere among each other. Illustration of the proposal is shown in detail through a case study: a hospital building whose sprinkler piping system is designed by means of the developed parametric approach.