## 1 Introduction and Literature Review
[16] studied the response of three-dimensional steel moment-resisting buildings having three-, nine-, and twenty-story heights under the bidirectional attack of real seismic sequences with different earthquake ground-motion features. Many other important studies aimed at meeting specific objectives, but following the general goal of evaluating the seismic behavior of steel frames with medium columns, can be found in the literature [17; 18; 19; 20; 21]. Despite the large amount of research developed in the area of the seismic behavior of steel buildings with MRF and the important contributions of the above-mentioned papers, only a few studies have been developed concerning the performance evaluation of steel buildings with MRF and deep columns. However, because of the compactness of the webs and flanges of a vast number of deep sections of grade 50, and because of the necessity of higher bending and shear stiffness to reduce drifts, structural engineers often use deep columns in high seismic regions resulting in more economical designs. Furthermore, it is stated that using W14 columns or smaller may result in unnecessarily heavy and more expensive columns. This seemingly contradicts what has been stated in some investigations [22] where it is argued that even though deep columns satisfy current seismic provisions, they can suffer premature twisting, which occurs at late stages of loading. Similarly, [PERSON] and [PERSON] [23] conducted an experimental study by using beam-column subassemblies with W27 columns, finding that lateral-torsional buckling of the beams produces twisting of the columns. Another study [24], however, encouraged the use of deep columns, stating that column twisting might have occurred primarily because of the way the specimen was tested where no top flange bracing was used at the beams, which in actual buildings is normally provided by the floors. Hence, if lateral-torsional buckling is avoided, the columns may remain stable even for significant levels of seismic demands. This stable behavior is expected to be better for the case of steel buildings that are symmetrical in plan. [PERSON] et al. [25] concluded that the behavior of moment connections with reduced beam sections and deep wide-flange columns satisfied the criteria of the AISC seismic provisions. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [26] tested three full-scale beam-column assemblies using W36 \(\times\) 256 beams and W30 \(\times\) 261 columns, concluding that the proposed connections satisfy the two interstory displacement cycles of 0.04 and the inelastic rotation of 0.03 required for the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD). [PERSON] and [PERSON] [27] and [PERSON] and [PERSON] [28,29] showed that, in steel frames with deep columns, a composite floor slab provides restraint to the top flange of the beams reducing (1) the magnitude of lateral movement of the beam top and bottom flanges in the RBS, (2) column twist, and (3) strength degradation due to beam instability. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [30], by using Finite Element simulations, demonstrated that column sections with large web slenderness, close to the web compactness limit requirements, have a high rate of cyclic deterioration in strength and axial shortening due to severe web local buckling. In many other studies [31, 32, 33], particular aspects of the response of steel buildings with deep columns were also addressed. Despite the important contributions of the above-mentioned studies concerning the behavior of steel buildings with medium and deep columns, as further stated below, there are many issues that deserve our attention. It is worth mentioning that in the experimental cyclic tests developed to evaluate and compare the behavior of steel buildings with medium and deep columns, the effect of the dynamic properties of buildings as well as that of the frequency content of the strong motions cannot be considered.