Seismic Collapse Capacity of Folded Plates

The collapses of building structures during recent earthquakes have raised many questions regarding the adequacy of current seismic provisions to prevent a partial or total collapse. They have also brought up questions as to how to determine the collapse safety margin of structures, what is the inherent collapse safety margin in code-designed structures, and how to strengthen structures to effectively augment such margin. Folded Plates belong to the class of stressed skin structures, which because of their geometry and small flexural rigidity of the skin; tend to carry loads primarily by membrane forces acting in their plane. Present work can be used as a guideline for the behavior of folded plate structures subjected to pushover analysis. The present study shows that there is a need of suggesting a method and preparing guidelines for the earthquake analysis of folded plate structures.