On conceptual provisions of design standards for earthquake-resistant construction

Introduction. The standards for earthquake-resistant construction have undergone three revisions over the past decade. Each new revision was accompanied by serious discussions. However, no fundamental changes were made to the planned level of seismic safety and methods of safety assurance. Today the scientific and technical level of these standards does not satisfy many specialists, that’s why the engineering community is considering the development of new generation standards. The overall purpose of the work is to focus the attention of specialists not so much on methodological issues of design, as on unresolved or underdeveloped issues. For some of them, solutions are presented that should be considered as the subject for discussion. Materials and methods. Analyses of the regulatory requirements for the means and methods of seismic protection, publications with proposed improvements, and a comparative analysis of regulatory documents of different countries were carried out. We also analyzed the experience of implementing regulatory requirements in software systems. Results. The importance of establishing a relationship between the limit states of structures and the categories of the technical state of facilities during and after seismic impacts was emphasized. The importance of formulating requirements for the analysis of buildings and structures, different levels of responsibility when checking their response to effects of earthquakes, having different recurrence, was also emphasized. We have formulated relevant recommendations that are offered as starting points of discussions. The need for more detailed regulation of the analysis in the time domain was highlighted. Problems were identified that need to be solved both with respect to the initial seismological information and with respect to draft strain diagrams describing the construction material. Considerations were provided on the set of requirements for the design of construction facilities according to the “building + base” pattern, boundary conditions for the considered part of the base and the recalculation of accelerograms in terms of their lower boundaries. Conclusions. Although the above considerations do not claim to be the final solution to these problems, they can serve as the basis for the development of a new generation of standards or as a material, which initiates relevant research and decision making.