Added to the 2015 National Building Code of Canada is a new design pathway that can be used for areas with very low seismic hazard levels.
If you are designing shear walls in an area with very low spectral acceleration values (Looking at you Manitoba and Saskatchewan) then we we have news for you! Added to MASS Version 4 is a seismic tab that allows the option to design for earthquake loads without having to satisfy the added earthquake considerations in CSA S304-14: Clause 16.
After entering in the location’s spectral accelerations and site data, MASS follows the procedure in the building code to perform the design. For sites not eligible for this earthquake design approach, MASS automatically flags these situations and triggers a failure message, alerting the user to switch to using the equivalent static force procedure.
More information regarding the seismic tab can be found here.
This post is part of a short series highlighting the new and improved features of MASS Version 4.0. The release notification can be found here and the full seismic tab documentation is available here (including using the equivalent static procedure).
