Seismic performance assessment of pre-engineered steel buildings on the west coast of Canada

This paper focuses on the seismic performance of typical pre-engineered steel buildings (PSB) on the west coast of Canada. PSB are widely adopted for commercial and industrial long span low-rise constructions. Their structural system consists of a moment resisting frame made of built-up tapered I-beam elements, which often have slender and/or non-compact sections to minimize steel consumption. Typical seismic design of PSB consists of elastic analysis with force reduction factors (FRF) that assume some ductility. However, failure mechanisms in PSB are usually governed by flange local buckling and lateral torsional buckling, which might not provide the expected ductility. This paper presents an extensive series of numerical analyses to evaluate the seismic performance of four PSB prototypes designed for the city of Victoria on the west coast of Canada. Prototypes have similar general dimensions, while members