COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF SOFT

STOREY MECHANISM USING TWO

DIFFERENT CODAL STANDARDS
Selvarasan P
PG Student, Dept. of Civil Engg, Sree Sastha Institute Of Engg And Tech, Chennai.
pselvacer@gmail.com

Abstract Soft storey or open ground storey is an

unavoidable feature in the multi-storey building. It is open
for the purpose of parking or reception lobbies. It is also
called as stilts storey. A large number of buildings with soft
storey have been built in recent years. But it showed poor
performance during past earthquake. Therefore it is need of
time to take immediate measures to prevent the
indiscriminate use of soft first storeys in buildings, which
are designed without regard to the increased displacement
and force demands in the first storey columns. In this regard,
this study talks about the provided strength and stiffness to
the 2D building frame by modified soft storey provision in
two ways - (i) By providing stiffer column and (ii) By
providing adjacent infill wall panel at each corner of
building frame. Also comparison of results has been carried
out to compare modified soft storey provisions with
complete infill wall frame and bare frame models of
structure designed with Indian and American Standards
using Finite Element Method software ETABS 2013 V
13.1.1 (Extended 3D Analysis of Building System).
Keywords Soft storey, Infill frames, seismic drift,
storey displacement, linear analysis, etc.,
I. INTRODUCTION
Reinforced concrete (RC) frame buildings are becoming
increasingly common in urban areas. Many such buildings
constructed in recent times have a special feature - the
ground storey is left open for the purpose of parking , i.e
columns in the ground storey do not have any partition walls
(of either masonry or RC) between them. Such buildings are
often called open ground storey buildings or buildings on
stilts. The relatively flexible in the ground storey or the
relative horizontal displacement it undergoes in the ground
storey is much larger than the above storeys, this flexible
ground storey is called soft storey.

Fig. 1 Soft Storey or Open Ground Storey Building

A. Performance Of Soft Storey Building
A large number of buildings with open ground
storey have been built in India in recent years. Open ground
storey buildings have consistently shown poor performance
during past earthquakes. Huge number of similarly designed
and constructed buildings exists in the various towns and
cities situated in moderate to severe seismic zones of the
country. The presence of walls in upper storeys makes them
much stiffer than the open ground storey. Thus, the upper
storeys move almost together as a single block, and most of
the horizontal displacement of the building occurs in the soft
ground storey itself. It gives result to collapse of the
building.
II. METHODS TO STRENGTHEN SOFT STOREY
MECHANISM
A. By providing stiff column
The effects of stiffness is very important as if the
setting of the stiffening elements at structure and their
geometrical specifications are not opted accurately, the
structure may undergo amplify against the earthquake waves
and the structure may be subject to fracture and may even
lose its practical aspects. If the stiffness of structure
elements in multi-storey structures alters, it can precipitate

the vibration of structural modes shape. Stiffness of a

column means resistance to deformation- the larger is the
stiffness, larger is the force required to deform it. In this
study, the seismic vulnerability of buildings with soft first
storey is shown with the help of core-study. The drift and
the strength demands in the first storey columns are very
large for buildings with soft ground storeys. Thus, it is
important to incorporate the stiff column at open ground
storey.
B. By providing Infill wall
Masonry infill is normally considered as nonstructural elements and their stiffness contributions are
generally ignored in practice. Masonry infill has several
advantages like good sound and heat insulation properties,
high lateral strength and stiffness. These help to increase the
strength and stiffness of RC frame and hence to decrease
lateral drift, energy dissipation capacity due to cracking of
infill and friction between infill and frame. This in turn
increases redundancy in building and reduces bending
moment in beams and columns. Masonry infill has
disadvantages like very high initial stiffness and
compressive strength. This also induces torsional effect in
the structure if not symmetrically placed. While analyzing
multi storey buildings, designers usually neglect the
contribution of masonry infill in resisting loads. They
consider only dead weight of masonry and analysis is done
by bare frame method. The present study has been carried
out the effect of masonry infill at adjacent side of each
corner of the open ground storey for 10 storied building
using ETABS 2012 V 13.1.1.
III.

Fig. 2 Plan of Building

Assumed sizes of beam, column and wall sections are:
Columns: 450 x 450 mm at all typical floors
Area, A = 0.20 m2,I = 0.003417 m4
Columns: 550 x 550 mm (for stiffened column)
Area, A = 0.30 m2, I = 0.007625 m4
Main beams: 300 x 450 mm at all floors
Area, A = 0.135 m2, I = 0.0023 m4
Wall panels: 250 mm at all floors (including infill at soft
storey)
IV.

MODELING OF 2D FRAMES

Following are the modeled 2D frames of a) Bare

Frame, b) Infill Wall at Corner and c) Stiff Column at soft
first storey

DESCRIPTION OF FRAME STRUCTURE

The G+9 building frame is considered in this study.

The Building is designed to resist Dead load, Live load &
Seismic load. Various load combinations were tried as per
IS 456, ASCE 07 and the worst case was taken into account
to design the respective member. Dead load Consists of Self
weight, Brick load & Floor load. Self weight was calculated
automatically using the assigned density & dimension by
ETABS itself.

Fig. 3 Modeled 2D frames

Load calculation transferred on beams from slab as follows:
Live load
= 4.0 kN/m2 at typical floor
Dead load
= Load transferred from slab to beam in
trapezoidal form.
= (1/2 x h x (a +b) x D x )
= (1/2 x 2.5 x (5 + 5) x 0.150 x 25)

= 9.375 kN/m (for beam in 2D frame)

Location
= Zone II
Wind load
= As per IS: 875-Not designed for wind
load, since earthquake loads exceeds the wind loads.
Earthquake load
= As per IS-1893 (Part 1) - 2002 and
ASCE 7-05
Type of soil
= Type II, Medium as per IS 1893:2002
Footing
= Assume isolated footings
Storey height
= Typical floor, Ground Floor: 3.5 m
Floors
= G.F. + 9 upper floors.
Walls
= 250 mm thick brick masonry walls.

V.

TABLE 1 MAXIMUM STOREY

DISPLACEMENT IS 1893:2002

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Soft storey analysis was conducted over the designed

building using ETABS 2013 v 13.1.1. Results of maximum
storey displacement, maximum storey drift and maximum
shear values and the various curves resulting from the
analysis are briefed in the following
Following are the Deformed Shapes Of (a) Bare Frame,
(b) Infill Wall at Corner and (c) Stiff Column at Soft First
Storey due to Lateral Loading as per IS 1893:2002 and
ASCE 7-05

TABLE 2 MAXIMUM STOREY DRIFT

IS 1893:2002

Fig. 4 Deformed shapes of 2D frames

Following table shows the Comparison of values of
maximum storey displacement and maximum storey drift
with various conditions of 2D soft storey building due to
lateral loading using IS1893:2002.

Following table shows the Comparison of values of

maximum storey displacement and maximum storey drift
with various conditions of 2D soft storey building due to
lateral loading using ASCE 07-05.

TABLE 4 MAXIMUM STOREY DRIFT

ASCE 07-05.

TABLE 3 MAXIMUM STOREY DISPLACEMENT

ASCE 07-05.

Following table shows the Comparison of values of

maximum storey drift with various conditions of 2D soft
storey building due to lateral loading using IS 1893:2002
with ASCE 7-05.
TABLE 5 MAXIMUM STOREY DISPLACEMENT AT
TOP AND MAXIMUM STOREY DRIFT AT BASE
IS 1893:2002 AND ASCE 7 05.

VI CONCLUSIONS
While considering soft storey mechanism, infill walls
in upper stories affect greater effect in storey
displacement and storey drift criteria. The presence of
walls in upper storeys makes them much stiffer than open
ground storey. Hence the upper storey move almost
together as a single block and most of the horizontal

displacement of the building occurs in the soft ground

storey itself. Such building swing back and forth like
inverted pendulums during earthquake shaking and
columns in the open ground storey are severely stressed.
The frame attains the maximum displacement of
0.004m which is less than 0.140m (0.004 times the storey
height) as per IS 1893:2002.
The obtained result from ETABS software shows infill
wall acts as the diagonal bracing in structure and the
storey displacement in soft storey column transfers lateral
force to adjacent infill wall panel.
Maximum storey Displacement and Maximum storey
Drift in 2D frame structure in descending order (1) Bare
frame model > (2) stiff column in soft first storey > (3)
Infill wall panel at corners of soft first storey, in both
Indian and American Standards results. Hence use of
infill walls at corners of soft first storey gives good
resistant to lateral force.
When comparing ETABS results of Indian and
American standards, Maximum storey Displacement and
Maximum storey drift values are more in American
Standards than Indian Standards.
REFERENCES
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ASCE 7-05: MINIMUM DESIGN LOADS FOR BUILDINGS AND

OTHER STRUCTURES. Amit S. Gawande SEISMIC ANALYSIS
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2.

Arturo Tena-Colunga Review OF THE SOFT FIRST STORY

IRREGULARITY CONDITION OF BUILDINGS FOR SEISMIC
DESIGN The Open Civil Engineering Journal, 2010, 4, 1-15

3.

Dande P. S., Kodag P. B. INFLUENCE OF PROVISION OF SOFT

STOREY IN RC FRAME BUILDING FOR EARTHQUAKE
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4.

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