Seismic collapse safety analysis of performance-based optimally designed reinforced concrete frames considering life-cycle cost

The present paper aims to assess the seismic collapse capacity of reinforced concrete (RC) frames optimized in the context of performance-based design. The proposed methodology in this work consists of two main phases namely, performance-based design optimization and seismic collapse safety assessment. In the first phase, an efficient metaheuristic algorithm is employed to carry out single-objective optimization of RC frames in the framework of performance-based design with two different objective functions including initial construction cost and total cost. In the second phase, the seismic collapse capacity of optimally designed RC frames is evaluated by conducting seismic fragility analysis. Three illustrative examples of 3-, 6-, and 12-story RC frames are presented to demonstrate the capability of the proposed methodology for designing of cost-efficient structures with considerable seismic collapse safety.