Introduction to Direct Displacement Based Design Procedure for Seismic Designing of Reinforced Concrete Buildings

Earths signs of ageing due to stress because of the selfish human activities are pretty ugly. The drastic changes occurring in our environment leading to several disastrous events due to shifting of tectonic plates i.e. frequent occurrences of earthquakes leading to loss of life as well as economy and thus proving the conventional structural design techniques flawed and incompetent. Hence, construction techniques working in harmonious combination of life safety and economy shall be adopted, a technique that is concerned with what a building is required to do, and not with prescribing how it is to be constructed. This paper aims to provide a brief introduction of a performance based design methodology i.e. direct displacement based design (DDBD) procedure, deficiencies in conventional force based design procedure (FBD) which cannot be overlooked anymore and which is why a shift from FBD to DDBD is the need of the hour.