SEISMIC PERFORMANCE OF AN OPEN GROUND STORY FRAMED

BUILDINGS DESIGNED AS PER INDIAN CODE

Haran Pragalath D. C., Pradip Sarkar, Robin Davis P

ABSTRACT

Open ground storey (OGS) framed buildings are increasing commonly in urban areas

especially in India. Vulnerability of this type of buildings was exposed in the past

earthquakes. OGS buildings are generally designed ignoring the stiffness of the infill walls.

These buildings invariably come under the classification of extreme soft storey criterion as

per IS 1893 (2002). Due to this criterion, design forces (bending moments and shear forces)

in all the columns of the ground storey from the bare frame analysis shall be enhanced by

multiplying by a factor 2.5 (multiplication factor). Studies show that the enhancement of

forces in the ground storey columns of the OGS framed buildings is mainly due to the

additional force arising from shift in time period. Contribution of infill wall stiffness in the

upper storeys is significant in the shift in time period. It is seen that the increase in design

forces in the ground storey columns due to the infill wall stiffness of the upper storeys are not

always of the order of 2.5. This depends on various parameters such as number of storeys,

strength and percentage of openings in infill walls etc. The application of multiplication

factor 2.5 in the design of OGS buildings may be too conservative in some cases. The

objective of the multiplication factor shall be such that the resultant OGS frame shall

guaranty the identical performance (in terms of probability of failure) as that of a fully

infilled frame building. The present work is to study the comparison of probability of failure

of typical OGS framed buildings designed with the multiplication factor 2.5, with

corresponding fully infilled frames.