LATERAL LOAD ANALYSIS OF SOFT STORY BUILDING AND IMPORTANCE OF MODELING MASONRY INFILL WITH NORMALIZED STRENGTH AND STIFFNESS RATIO

Generally Masonry infills are considered as non-structural elements and their stiffness contributions are generally ignored in practice. But they affect both the structural and non-structural performance of the RC buildings during earthquakes. RC frame building with open first storey is known as soft storey, which performs poorly during strong earthquake shaking. A similar soft storey effect can occur if first and second story used as service story. Hence a combination of two structural system components i.e. Rigid frames and RC shear walls leads to a highly efficient system in which shear wall resist the majority of the lateral loads and the frame supports majority of the gravity loads. To study the effect of masonry infill with different soft storey level, 7 models of Reinforced Concrete framed building were analyzed with two types of shear wall when subjected to earthquake loading. The results of bare frame and other building models have been compared, it is observed that model with swastika and L shape shear wall are showing efficient performance and hence reducing the effect of soft storey in model 3, model 4 and model 5.