The thesis includes an examination of the lateral force method, which is the simplest seismic analysis method from the Eurocode 8 standard. The first part of the thesis shows a comparison of the method with respect to the existing and the new version of the standard. The requirements for the modelling of structures and verification of damage limitation based on displacements, which must be verified regardless of the type of seismic analyses, are also briefly presented. The second part of the thesis includes an analysis of the effect of differences in the lateral force method by means of three examples of reinforced concrete structures. It was found that the results obtained with the existing version of the standard can differ significantly due to different approaches for the calculation of the fundamental vibration period. However, if the fundamental vibration period is calculated by the most accurate approach, the differences to the results obtained with the draft of the new and existing standard are small. It is expected that other design factors of the new standard that are not exclusively associated with the lateral force method will have greater impact on the design than the application of the lateral force method. These design factors are the elastic acceleration spectrum, the behavior factor and the ratio between the actual and calculated displacements.
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