Critical review of fully probabilistic design for seismic loadings

The necessity of fully probabilistic design for short duration dynamic loadings including seismic loading is critically reviewed. Implementation of fully probabilistic design for static loadings has had limited success, particularly in cases where the limit state functions are available in explicit form. However, in most cases of practical significance, the limit state functions are not available even for static loadings. For nonlinear static loadings and linear or nonlinear dynamic or seismic loadings, the limit state function is implicit, and can only be expressed in algorithmic form, e.g. using the finite element algorithm. The issues and challenges of fully probabilistic design for implicit limit state functions emphasizing seismic loading are discussed. A method is proposed and the procedure is explained with the help of an example.