Structural Behaviors of Soft Story Buildings under Seismic Action

Now days the high rise or multi story building, soft story construction is a typical feature because of suburbanization and the space occupancy deliberations. .Due to massive growth in population, parking spaces is big attentions for the apartments in the towns. Hence new tendency for utilize the ground story for a parking’s, also for office spaces or conference hall etc., soft story at different levels of structure are constructed. After 26th January 2001, Gujarat Earthquake and other earthquakes in India, there is a nation-wide attention to the seismic defenselessness assessment of existing buildings. In the past earthquake has shown that the buildings with simple and uniform shapes are subjected to less damage. Regularity and continuity of stiffness in the horizontal planes as well as in vertical direction is very important from earthquake safety point of view. A building with discontinuity is subjected to concentration of forces and deformations at the point of discontinuity which may leads to the failure of members at the junction and collapse of buildings. Opening in first story is a typical feature in the recent multistory constructions in urban India. Such features are highly undesirable in buildings built in seismically active areas; this has been verified in numerous experiences of strong shaking during the past earthquakes. Though multistoried buildings with open (soft) ground floor are inherently vulnerable to collapse due to earthquake load, their construction is still widespread in the developing nations like India. This story level consisting with the concrete columns which are not able to provide tolerable shear resistance, hence damages and collapses are may often observe in soft story buildings during the earthquake. In this experimental study, the focus is on the investigation of the effect of a soft story on the behavior of a structure and effect of masonry infill on building construction.