IMPORTANCE OF GOOD NONLINEAR ANALYSIS

Nonlinear analysis is becoming a popular tool for performance evaluation of structural systems at the life safety
and collapse prevention levels. The challenge is to develop analytical tools and component models that make it
possible to conduct such analysis with a sufficient degree of confidence. An exact replication of reality is desirable
but not critical because of many sources of uncertainty, such as ground motion intensity and frequency
content, and modeling uncertainties, which cannot be eliminated by the most accurate analysis. As summarized
in this paper, there are several options to nonlinear analysis, and the simplest one that gets close to reality is
usually the best one