The Controlled Rocking Reinforced Concrete Frame (CR-RCF) weakens structural lateral-resisting stiffness to reduce structural damage through its resilient rocking columns and rocking joints. The post-tensioned unbonded prestressed strands in CR-RCF structure provide elastic restoring force to re-center the structure under an earthquake. Based on previous theoretical and experimental studies, a seismic design method for CR-RCF structure is proposed. The seismic performance level and the design flow of CR-RCF structures are investigated. The performance-based seismic design case of a 3-story-3-bay CR-RCF structure is carried out, the dynamic time-history analysis of finite element method is adopted to simulate the earthquake responses under three rare earthquake waves. Research results indicated that the maximum value of inter-story drifts of the CR-RCF structure under rare earthquakes matches well with the designed performance criteria, and the CR-RCF structure has excellent seismic-resisting performance and great self-centering capacity. The effectiveness of the performance-based seismic design method of CR-RCF is verified.
