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Seismic Behavior of Soft Storey Building With Static and Dynamic Earthquake
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 International Journal of Structural Engineering and Analysis
Vol. 2: Issue 2
www.journalspub.com

Seismic Behavior of Soft Storey Building With Static and

Dynamic Earthquake Loading
S.P. Nirkhe1*, A.G. Dahake, V.R. Upadhye2
1
Department of Civil Engineering, Deogiri Institute of Engineering AND Management Studies, Aurangabad,
Maharashtra, India
2
Department of Civil Engineering, Marathwada Institute of Technology, Aurangabad, Maharashtra, India

ABSTRACT
Soft storey building played an important role in development of multistoried buildings in
India. Functional and Social need to provide car parking space at ground level and for
offices open stories at different level of structure far out-weighs the warning against such
buildings from engineering community. With the availability of fast computers, so that
software usage in civil engineering has greatly reduced the complexities of different aspects
in the analysis and design of projects. In this paper an investigation has been made to study
the seismic behavior of soft storey building with different arrangement in soft storey building
when subjected to static and dynamic earthquake loading. It is observed that, providing infill
improves resistant behavior of the structure when compared to soft storey provided.

Keywords: seismic loads, soft storey, static and dynamic analysis

*
Corresponding Author
E-mail: saurabh.nirkhe@gmail.com

INTRODUCTION country, most of the existing buildings are

Open storey building provides facility for
car parking in highly populated areas.
Hence the trend has been to utilize the
ground storey of the building itself for
parking or reception lobbies in the first
storey. These types of buildings having no
infill masonry walls in ground storey, but
all upper storey’s unfilled in masonry
walls are called “soft first storey or open
ground storey building.” Experience of
different nations with the poor and
devastating performance of such buildings
during earthquakes always seriously
discouraged construction of such a
building with a soft ground floor. This
storey known as weak storey, because this
storey stiffness is lower compare to above
storey. So that easily collapses by
earthquake. Due to wrong construction
practices and ignorance for earthquake
resistant design of buildings in our
vulnerable to future earthquakes. So, prime
importance to be given for the earthquake
resistant design. The Indian seismic code
IS 1893 (Part1): 2002 classifies a soft
storey as “one in which the lateral stiffness
is less than 70 percent of that in the storey
above or less than 80 percent of the
average lateral stiffness of the three
storey’s above.
Objectives and Scope
Stability of earth is always disturbed due
to internal forces and as a result of such
disturbance, vibrations or jerks in ear this
crust takes place, which is known as an
earthquake. Earthquake produces low–
high waves which vibrate the base of
structure in various manners and
directions, so that lateral force is
developed on structure. In such buildings,
the stiffness of the lateral load resisting

IJSEA (2016) 1–7 © JournalsPub 2016. All Rights Reserved Page 1

Seismic Behavior of Soft Storey Building
systems at those stories is quite less than
the stories above or below. In this paper an
investigation has been made to study the
seismic behavior of soft storey building
with different arrangement in soft storey
building when subjected to static and
dynamic earthquake loading. It is observed
that, providing infill improves resistant
behavior of the structure when compared
to soft storey provided.
SEISMIC BEHAVIOR ON RC FRAME
BUILDING IN INDIA
In India almost all multistory buildings
have open first storey. Because first storey
get accommodated for parking or reception
lobbies. The second storey used for brick
wall construction. As per Indian seismic
code a soft storey is nothing but lateral
stiffness of the building is less than 50%
[IS: 1893, 1997].[1–15] Normally building
experienced total seismic base shear,
during an earthquake by its natural period.
The seismic force distributed base on
stiffness and mass along the height. In soft
storey building, the upper storey being
stiff, undergo smaller inter-storey drifts.
However, the inter-storey drift in the soft
first storey is large. The strength demands
on the columns in the first storey for third
buildings are also large, as the shear in the
first storey is maximum. For the upper
storey’s, however, the forces in the
columns are effectively reduced due to the
presence of the Buildings with abrupt
changes in storey stiffness’s have uneven
lateral force distribution along the height,
which is likely to locally induce stress
concentration. This has adverse effect on
the performance of buildings during
ground shaking. Such buildings are
required to be analyzed by the dynamic
analysis and designed carefully.
Many earthquakes in the past, e.g., San
Fernando 1971, Northridge 1994, Kobe
1995, have demonstrated the potential
hazard associated with such buildings.
Major damage too many reinforced
concrete and steel buildings in the
IJSEA (2016) 1–7 © JournalsPub 2016. All Rights Reserved
Nirkhe et al.
Hyogoken-Nanbu earthquake of January
17, 1995 [AIJ, 1995], and to critical
hospital facilities in the San Fernando
earthquake of 1971, were attributed to the
soft first storey. Alarming amount of
damage to the buildings with open
basements for parking has been reported
during the Northridge earthquake of
January 17, 1994 [Hall, 1994; EQEI,
1994]. The recent Jabalpur earthquake of
22 May 1997 [Jain et al, 1997] also
illustrated the handicap of Indian buildings
with soft first storey.[16–18] This
earthquake, the first one in an urban
neighborhood in India, provided an
opportunity to assess the performance of
engineered buildings in the country during
ground shaking. The damage incurred by
Himgiri and Ajanta apartments in the city
of Jabalpur are very good examples of the
inherent risk involved in the construction
of buildings with soft first storey. Himgiri
is a RC frame building with open first
storey on one side for parking, and brick
infill walls on the other side. The columns
on the other side had much lesser level of
damage in them. There was only nominal
damage in the upper storey’s consisting of
cracks in the filler walls. This is a clear
case of columns damaged as a result of the
“soft first storey”.
The Ajanta apartment’s buildings are a set
of almost identical four storey RC frame
building located side-by-side. In each of
these buildings, there are two apartments
in each storey, excepting the first storey.
One building has two apartments in the
upper storeys, but only one apartment in
the first storey. The open space on the
other side is meant for parking, and hence
has no in filled wall panels.
Whereas, only nominal damages were
reported in the building with two
apartments the first storey, the first storey
columns on the open side in the other
building were very badly damaged. The
damage consisted of buckling of
longitudinal bars, snapping of ties, spalling
Page 2
 International Journal of Structural Engineering and Analysis
of cover and crushing of core concrete
(Figures 1–4).
Fig. 1. Collapse of multistorey building
due to soft storey.
Fig. 2. L-shaped plan of commercial
building with collapse part.
Fig. 3. Damage to columns in Himgiri
apartment.
IJSEA (2016) 1–7 © JournalsPub 2016. All Rights Reserved
Vol. 2: Issue 2
www.journalspub.com
Fig. 4. Damage to columns in the stilt
storey of Youth Hostel Building.
Example Formulation
For this study I have selected building
which shown in Figure 3. The building is
residential and for this study seismic zone
is III. The footing of building is isolated
footings (2 m × 2 m) on medium strength
soil through under the columns. When a
central concrete service core is used, a 2 m
wide footing is taken to go all around
under the wall in the core. To show the
effect of soil flexibility, the modulus of
surged reaction of the soil is taken 30,000
kPa [Prakash, 1981]. Elastic moduli of
concrete and masonry are 28,500 and 3500
MPa, respectively, and their Poison’s ratio
is 0.2. Performance factor (K) has been
taken as 1.0 (assuming ductile detailing).
The unit weights of concrete and masonry
are taken as 25 and 20 kPa. The floor
finish on the floors is 1 kPa. The
weathering course on roof is taken 2.25
kPa. The live load on floor is taken as 2
kPa and that on roof as 0.75 kPa. In the
seismic weight calculations, only 25% of
the floor live load is considered.[19–25]
Analysis of Building
Linear elastic analysis is performed for the
nine models of the building using ETABS
analysis package [Habibullah, 1995]. The
frame members are modeled with rigid end
zones, the walls are modeled as panel
elements, and the floors are modeled as
Page 3
Seismic Behavior of Soft Storey Building Nirkhe et al.

diaphragms rigid in-plane. The soil Multimodal Dynamic Analysis

flexibility is introduced as linear Winkler
springs under the footing. When the
central service core is used, walls in the
core are discredited finely into 250 mm
wide vertical strips to enable the modeling
of a continuous soil support through linear
Wrinkle springs. Two different analyses
are performed on the models of the
building considered in this study, namely
the equivalent static analysis and the
multi-modal dynamic analysis. These are
briefly described below.
Equivalent Static Analysis
The natural period of the building is
calculated by the expression, given in IS:
1893-1984, wherein H is the height and D
is the base dimension of the building in the
considered direction of vibration. Thus, the
natural periods for all the models in this
method is the same. The lateral load
calculation and its distribution along the
height are done as per IS: 1893-1984. The
seismic weight is calculated using full
dead load plus 25% of live load.
Dynamic analysis of the building models
is performed on ETABS. The lateral loads
generated by ETABS correspond to the
seismic zone III and the 5% damped
response spectrum given in IS:1893-1984.
The natural period values are calculated by
ETABS, by solving the Eigen value
problem of the model. Thus, the total
earthquake load generated and its
distribution along the height corresponds
to the mass and stiffness distribution as
modeled by ETABS. Here, as in the
equivalent static analysis, the seismic mass
is calculated using full dead load plus 25%
of live load.
RESULT AND DISCUSSION
The displacements and forces from the
equivalent static method are consistently
larger by about 20% than those from the
multi-modal dynamic analysis method.
The results are presented in Tables 1 and 2
graphically illustrated in Figure 5.

Table 1. Storey stiffness of first and second storey’s for different building models.
Storey stiffness (KN/mm)
Building model
Transverse Longitudinal
First Second First Second
Open first storey 230 3448 227 5263
220 mm thick walls in upper storey
Open first storey 225 2083 220 3030
110 mm thick walls in upper storey
Bare frame 185 365 166 291
Brick in-filled completely 2273 3571 3571 5263
Open first storey 474 3333 694 5000
Brick service core
Open first storey 2346 4349 4167 7134
Concrete service core
Open first storey with stiffer 2941 3846 2778 5556
Columns
Open first storey 300 3125 308 4546
Concrete service core
Flexible soil under core only
Open first storey 205 1613 220 2857

IJSEA (2016) 1–7 © JournalsPub 2016. All Rights Reserved Page 4

 International Journal of Structural Engineering and Analysis
Vol. 2: Issue 2
www.journalspub.com

Table 2. Codal and analytical fundamentals natural periods of different buildings models.
Fundamental natural period
Transverse Longitudinal
Code Analysis Code Analysis
0.42 0.43 0.27 0.42
0.42 0.38 0.27 0.38
0.42 0.64 0.27 0.71
0.42 0.18 0.27 0.15
0.42 0.31 0.27 0.26
0.42 0.18 0.27 0.13
0.42 0.16 0.27 0.15
0.42 0.38 0.27 0.37
0.42 0.5 0.27 0.44

0.8

0.7

0.6

0.5 Transverse Code

0.4 Transverse Analysis

Longitudinal code
0.3
Longitudinal Analysis
0.2

0.1

0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Fig. 5. Graphically comparison of codal and analytical fundamentals natural periods of

different buildings models.

CONCLUSION an underestimation of base shear.

RC frame buildings with soft story are
known to perform poorly during in strong
earthquake shaking. Because the stiffness
at lower floor is 70% lesser than stiffness
at storey above it causing the soft storey to
happen. For a building that is not provided
any lateral load resistance component such
as shear wall or bracing, the strength is
consider very weak and easily fail during
earthquake. In such a situation, an
investigation has been made to study the
seismic behavior of such buildings
subjected to earthquake load so that some
guideline could be developed to minimize
the risk involved in such type of buildings.
It has been found earthquake forces by
treating them as ordinary frames results in
Investigators analysis numerically and use
various computer programs such as Staad-
Pro, ETABS, SAP2000, etc. Calculation
shows that, when RC framed buildings
having brick masonry infill on upper floor
with soft ground floors subjected to
earthquake loading, base shear can be
more than twice to that predicted by
equivalent earthquake force method with
or without infill or even by response
spectrum method when no infill in the
analysis model.
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