Enhanced Seismic Design of the New San Diego Central Courthouse

This paper presents the application of advanced seismic design methods and technologies to achieve enhanced seismic performance objectives for the New San Diego Central Courthouse project. The building superstructure consists of a cost-effective, steel-framed superstructure with two-way lateral special moment-resisting frames utilizing ductile reduced WF beam section "RBS" connections with WF cruciform and built-up box column sections. The steel moment-resisting frames incorporate 106 nonlinear viscous damping devices to provide a distributed supplemental energy dissipating damping system over the height of the structure to reduce seismically-induced building story shears, story drifts, floor accelerations and inelastic rotational demands on moment frame beam-column joints. This paper is intended to document the enhanced seismic performance objectives in the application of advanced seismic design methods and technologies to share with a broad audience in achieving resilient and sustainable structures systems in regions of high seismicity. It describes the step by step approach to selection of the final lateral system for the project.