Improved multimode pushover procedure for asymmetric in plan buildings under biaxial seismic excitation—application to tall buildings

An improved version of a recently developed multimode pushover procedure for asymmetric in plan buildings under biaxial seismic excitation is presented and evaluated. The proposed methodology is quite similar to the well‐known modal pushover analysis. However, the establishment of the equivalent single‐degree‐of‐freedom systems is based on a new concept, which takes into account multidirectional seismic effects. The proposed methodology does not require independent analysis in the two orthogonal directions, and therefore, the application of simplified directional combination rules is avoided. The improvement presented here consists in definition of correction factors to be applied to the response values at the stiff side of buildings. An extensive evaluation study comprising applications to tall buildings is presented. The response parameters obtained from the proposed methodology in most cases envelope the values resulting from nonlinear dynamic analysis (NDA). Furthermore, the mean errors with regard to the NDA results are smaller than those obtained from a multimode pushover procedure comprising independent analysis along two horizontal axes and directional combination of the results. In general, the proposed methodology provides a reasonable estimation of the seismic performance of asymmetric buildings.