Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to propose a new stiffness design method for shear building subject to a design earthquake with non-monotonic displacement spectrum. The objective function that is a combination of the fundamental natural period which represents 'cost' and the level of maximum displacements which represents 'performance' is introduced into the design method to find a set of story stiffness under response constraints. An inverse problem formulation is used to find the stiffness such that the shear building would exhibit maximum interstory drifts proportional to specified ones. Several design examples and time-history analyses are performed to demonstrate the validity and the accuracy of the proposed design method.
