Structures 20 (2019) 822–831

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Structures
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/structures

Open ground story in properly designed reinforced concrete frame buildings T

with shear walls
Emre Akın
Adnan Menderes University, Department of Civil Engineering, Aydın, Turkey

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The effects of infill walls on the seismic response of reinforced concrete buildings and possible deficiencies
Infill wall caused by these members have been the subject of many research studies in the past decade. The open ground
Reinforced concrete story where the infill walls are not present only in that particular story has generally been related to a soft-story
Shear wall deficiency. However, the formation of a soft story deficiency due to open ground story, or at least the scale of it
Soft story
may depend on certain properties of the building, infill wall and even characteristics of the ground motion. For
Seismic response
instance, the existence of shear walls may not only change the overall structural behavior but also the con-
tribution of masonry infill walls to the lateral response. In this study, reinforced concrete buildings which were
designed according to the current seismic code previsions so as to contain varying amounts of shear walls are
considered. It was aimed to concentrate on the soft story problem which may be induced by the non-uniform
distribution of infill walls in these buildings with a special emphasis on the effect of shear walls. The nonlinear
structural models without infills/with different patterns of infills were subjected to five different time-history
records for this purpose. The results demonstrate that the existence of shear walls reduces the risk for a soft-story
formation due to open ground story considerably. And there seems to be a critical value for the amount of shear
walls in order to provide a meaningful reduction of this risk.

1. Introduction due to OGS is investigated in case of properly designed RC buildings

The contribution and effects of infill walls on the lateral response of
reinforced concrete (RC) frame buildings have been well established by
various studies [1–8], although research continues thanks to the im-
provement of more refined infill models and analytical tools. The ir-
regular distribution of these members may lead to non-uniform allo-
cation of stiffness and strength and accordingly a possible structural
deficiency. For instance, the open ground story (OGS) is generally re-
lated to soft/weak story deficiency [9,10]. Eurocode 8 [11] states that if
there are “drastic reduction of infills in one or more stories compared to
the other ones”, “the seismic action effects in the vertical elements of
the respective stories shall be increased” by a magnification factor, η. It
was stated in [12] that “The stiffness of the seismic-force-resisting
system in any story shall not be less than 70% of the seismic-force-
resisting system stiffness in an adjacent story above or less than 80% of
the average seismic-force-resisting system stiffness of the three stories
above”. The Turkish seismic code [13] defines soft-story based on ratios
of “inter-story drift ratios (IDR)” corresponding to adjacent stories.
However, it was mentioned that the lateral drifts should be obtained
from a linear analyses considering equivalent static seismic forces.
In the current study, the scale of a possible soft-story mechanism
with regard to the presence and amount of shear walls. This will be
attempted by a search for the accumulation of inelastic seismic de-
mands at the ground story due to the absence of infill walls. For this
purpose, the nonlinear static pushover and dynamic time-history ana-
lyses were conducted on the numerical models. Five different earth-
quake ground motion records were selected and matched with a se-
lected design spectrum for the time-history analyses.
2. Numerical modeling
The nonlinear structural modeling and pushover/time-history ana-
lyses were conducted by using SeismoStruct (2016) software [14]. A 4-
story residential reinforced concrete building which has three spans
along both orthogonal axes was considered in three groups so as to have
no shear walls (NSW), two shear walls (SW-2) or four shear walls (SW-
4) along the x-direction. The shear wall area to floor area ratio is ap-
proximately 0.36 and 0.72% for groups SW-2 and SW-4, respectively.
The buildings of each group were designed separately according to the
current seismic code of Turkey. A high-ductility level was aimed in
design by a consideration of capacity design principles. The shear walls
were placed symmetrically at the outer circumference of the models in

E-mail address: eakin@adu.edu.tr.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.istruc.2019.07.003
Received 24 February 2019; Received in revised form 17 May 2019; Accepted 2 July 2019
Available online 19 July 2019
2352-0124/ © 2019 Institution of Structural Engineers. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
E. Akın Structures 20 (2019) 822–831

Table 1
Longitudinal reinforcements of columns.
Group Columns Longitudinal reinforcement

NSW C05, C08, C09, C12 14ϕ20

C01, C04, C13, C16 10ϕ20
All other columns 8ϕ20
SW-2 C05, C08, C09, C12 12ϕ20
All other columns 8ϕ20
SW-4 C05, C08, C09, C12 10ϕ20
All other columns 8ϕ20

groups SW-2 and SW-4. The building was assumed to be located in

Aydın, Turkey, which is one of the most vulnerable earthquake zones
according to seismic design code [13]. The assumption of rigid dia-
phragm was adopted for the lateral response of slabs and beams at each
story level. The floor dead and live loads were chosen to be 1.5 kN/m2
(i.e. a total slab dead load of 4.38 kN/m2 with a slab thickness of
120 mm) and 2.0 kN/m2, respectively. The unit weights of concrete and
infill walls were regarded as 24 kN/m3 and 8 kN/m3, respectively. It
should be noted that the infill walls were considered as non-structural
members at this initial design stage; therefore only the weights of these
members were included in the design. The characteristic compressive
strength of concrete was 25 MPa. The type of both longitudinal and
transverse reinforcement was selected to have a characteristic yield
strength of 420 MPa. In all groups, the cross-sectional dimensions of
columns and shear walls were determined to be 250 × 600 mm2 and
250 × 1750 mm2, respectively. The longitudinal reinforcement details Fig. 1. Plan view of the model in group NSW (dimensions in cm.)
of columns are summarized in Table 1 for each group. The lateral re-
inforcement of all columns is ϕ8/100 mm. The shear walls in both C01, C04, C13 and C16 in group SW-4. This was done in such a way that
groups of SW-2 and SW-4 have longitudinal reinforcement of 10ϕ14 at the shear wall and replacing column orientations are identical. The
the end columns and 18ϕ14 at the main body. The lateral reinforce- identification numbering of shear walls was kept same as replacing
ments for the main body of shear walls are ϕ10/160 mm. The cross- columns in group NSW (i.e. W14 in group SW-2 instead of C14 in group
sectional dimensions of beams are 250 × 500 mm2. The longitudinal NSW).
reinforcement of beams varies depending on the neighboring members In each group, three building models with different infill wall pat-
(Table 2). The beam transverse reinforcements are ϕ8/140 mm. The terns were considered, namely bare frame (BF), fully infilled (FI) and
structural layout plan of the model in group NSW is presented in Fig. 1. open ground story (OGS) structures. The infill walls were placed at the
The shear walls with the dimensions of 250 × 1750 mm2 are located four interior (i.e. in between B1-B2, B3-B4, C1-C2 and C3-C4) and two
instead of columns C02 and C14 in group SW-2 and instead of columns exterior spans (i.e. in between A2-A3 and D2-D3) along the x-direction
with thicknesses of 100 mm and 200 mm, respectively. The infills were
assumed to have no openings. In other words, the contribution of infill
Table 2 walls with window or door openings, which have to exist in an actual
Longitudinal reinforcements of beams that are along the x-direction. building was neglected in this study.
Group Beams Longitudinal reinforcement
2.1. Modeling of reinforced concrete members
Left support Span Right support

NSW B101, B110 7ϕ16 (top) 2ϕ16 (top) 5ϕ16 (top) The nonlinear model of Mander et al. [15] was utilized for concrete
5ϕ16 (bot.) 4ϕ16 4ϕ16 (bot.) in association with the cyclic rules defined by [16]. The tensile strength
B102, B111 5ϕ16 (top) (bot.) 5ϕ16 (top) of concrete was neglected since mostly global response was considered
4ϕ16 (bot.) 4ϕ16 (bot.)
in this study. The modulus of elasticity was regarded as 30,000 MPa for
B103, B112 5ϕ16 (top) 7ϕ16 (top)
4ϕ16 (bot.) 5ϕ16 (bot.) the concrete material. The strain value corresponding to peak com-
B104, B105, B106, B107, 3ϕ16 (top) 2ϕ16 (top) 3ϕ16 (top) pressive stress of concrete was assumed as 0.002. A uniaxial steel model
B108, B109 2ϕ16 (bot.) 3ϕ16 2ϕ16 (bot.) was used for both longitudinal and transverse reinforcement where the
(bot.) strain hardening ratio was assumed as 0.005 and modulus elasticity was
SW-2a B101, B110 5ϕ16 (top) 2ϕ16 (top) 7ϕ16 (top)
2 × 105 MPa. “Inelastic force-based frame element” of SeismoStruct
5ϕ16 (bot.) 4ϕ16 5ϕ16 (bot.)
B102, B111 6ϕ16 (top) (bot.) 4ϕ16 (top) software was employed to provide distributed inelasticity in the mod-
4ϕ16 (bot.) 3ϕ16 (bot.) eling of RC members. The elements were divided into four integration
B103, B112 4ϕ16 (top) 4ϕ16 (top) sections which were discretized into 100 and 150 fibers for the beams/
3ϕ16 (bot.) 3ϕ16 (bot.)
a
columns and shear walls, respectively. The support reinforcements as
SW-4 B101, B110 7ϕ16 (top) 2ϕ16 (top) 3ϕ16 (top)
5ϕ16 (bot.) 4ϕ16 4ϕ16 (bot.)
determined during the design process were assigned to the first and last
B102, B111 3ϕ16 (top) (bot.) 3ϕ16 (top) integration sections of beams. Whereas, the second and third integra-
4ϕ16 (bot.) 4ϕ16 (bot.) tion sections were defined with the span reinforcement.
B103, B112 3ϕ16 (top) 7ϕ16 (top)
4ϕ16 (bot.) 5ϕ16 (bot.)
2.2. Modeling of infill walls
a
Only beams where the reinforcement change is included in groups SW-2
and SW-4. The fair (i.e. average) quality masonry wall properties as defined in

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[17] were used to define the mechanical characteristics of infill walls in
this study. The corresponding compressive strength (fm′), modulus of
elasticity (Em) and shear strength of infill walls are 4.1 MPa, 2255 MPa
and 0.14 MPa, respectively. The nonlinear modeling of infill walls was
provided by means of four-node inelastic infill panel element of Seis-
moStruct software [18]. The infill panels consist of two axial struts and
one shear strut (only active in compression) along each diagonal di-
rection. The axial strut elements can either be subjected to compression
or tension in definition. However, the tensile strength of these elements
was defined to be zero in the model. The four failure mechanisms as
defined in [19] are used to determine the diagonal capacity of axial
struts. The related expressions are given by Eqs. (1)–(4) corresponding
to diagonal tension, sliding of bed joints, corner crushing and diagonal
cracking at the center of panel, respectively. The minimum value cal-
culated for these four failure modes is assigned as the axial capacity of
struts.
fmθ = [0.6fws + 0.3σv]/[bw /d w] (1)
fmθ = [(1.2 sin θ + 0.45 cos θ) fwu + 0.3σv]/[bw /d w ] (2)
fmθ = [1.12fm′ sin θ cos θ]/[K1 (λh)−0.12 + K2 (λh)0.88] (3)
fmθ = [1.16fm′ tan θ]/[K1 + K2 × λh] (4)
In these equations, fws and fwu represent the shear resistance of
mortar joints under diagonal compression and sliding resistance, re-
spectively. The shear strength defined previously (i.e. 0.14 MPa) is as-
sumed for both parameters which may be regarded as conservative
according to the values provided in the literature [20]. σv is the vertical
compression stress caused by the gravity forces which was ignored in
the model. h is the story height and the expression for λ is provided by
[17].
λ = [(Em tinf. sin 2θ )/(4Ec Ic h inf.)]0.25 (5)
tinf. is the thickness of infill panels which are taken as 200 mm and
100 mm for the exterior and interior partition walls, respectively. hinf. is
the height of infill walls. Ec and Ic are the modulus of elasticity for
concrete and moment of inertia of the column, respectively. θ is angle
which defines inclination of the diagonal of infill with respect to the
horizontal axis. The stiffness of the infill panel is defined by the strut
width, bw in Eq. (6) where dw is the diagonal length of infill wall. K1
and K2 are defined according to λh in Eqs. (7.a)–(7.c).
b w = 0.175(λh)−0.4 × dw (6)
K1 = 1.3 and K2 = −0.178 for (λh < 3.14) (7.a)
K1 = 0.707 and K2 = 0.01 for (3.14 ≤ λh ≤ 7.85) (7.b)
Table 3
Parameters for the selection of ground motion records.
Parameter Interval/property
Fault type Strike slip + normal
Earthquake magnitude 6.2–7.2
Rupture distance (RRUP) (km) 0–100
Joyner-Boore distance (RJB) (km) 0–30
Shear wave velocity over the top 30 m of subsurface (Vs30) 150–300
(m/s)
lateral loading was applied as an inverse triangular manner so as to
mimic the fundamental mode shapes of the models in the x-direction. It
should be noted that the modal mass participation along the x-direction
were determined to be 85.6, 79.9 and 77.5% for the bare frames in
groups NSW, SW-2 and SW-4, respectively.
The nonlinear time-history analyses were performed by using five
different ground acceleration records. These records were acquired
from Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) “NGA-
West 2” database according to an earthquake scenario chosen for the
location assumed for the design of buildings (i.e. Aydın, Turkey). The
parameters considered for the earthquake scenario are presented in
Table 3. The intervals or properties for these parameters were de-
termined considering the historical records and existing faults for the
selected location [24]. The resulting ground motion records to be used
in this study are “Dinar-Turkey”, “Düzce-Turkey”, “Imperial Valley-
California-06”, “Kobe-Japan” and “Managua-Nicaragua-01”.
Five selected acceleration records were then matched with the de-
sign spectrum considered in the design stage of buildings by using
SeismoMatch software [25]. A two-stage matching was applied with a
maximum of 30% misfit tolerance (i.e. first up to a period of 1 s. and
then up to 4 s.). The resulting matched spectrums and design spectrum
are shown in Fig. 2 where the fundamental periods of all models are
provided. The time-history analyses were conducted using these mat-
ched acceleration records.
4. Discussion of results
The results of both nonlinear static pushover and dynamic time-
history analyses of code-compliant building models with/without shear
walls are presented and discussed. The models are entitled so as to show
structural type having various amounts of RC shear walls (i.e. NSW,
SW-2 or SW-4) and infill wall pattern (i.e. BF, FI or OGS). In case of
nonlinear time-history analyses, the ground motion record (i.e. Dinar,
Düzce, ImpVall, Kobe or Managua) is also specified at the end of the

K1 = 0.47 and K2 = 0.04 for (λh > 7.85) (7.c)

In order to be compatible with the values in literature, the strain
corresponding to peak strength and ultimate strain for the axial strut
were assumed to be 0.001 and 0.010, respectively [20,21]. The shear
bond strength (τo) for the shear strut model was assumed as equal to the
shear strength of infill walls which is again within the range suggested
by the literature [22]. The friction coefficient (μ) for the shear strut was
chosen to be 0.7 in accordance with the suggestion of [23]. The ex-
pression that was used to determine the maximum shear resistance
(τmax) is provided in Eq. (8) as given by the manual of SeismoStruct.
τmax = τo + 0.30 (8)

3. Analyses

The dynamic properties of building models in different groups were

determined initially as a result of eigenvalue analyses. Besides, static
pushover analyses were conducted with a purpose of revealing char-
acter of the models under lateral loading along the x-direction. The Fig. 2. Matched spectrums for the selected ground motions.

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Fig. 3. Pushover capacity curves of the models along the x-direction.
model name.
4.1. Pushover analyses results
The resulting pushover capacity curves are presented in Fig. 3.a–c
corresponding to NSW, SW-2 and SW-4 groups. A 15% decrease in the
base shear capacity was regarded as failure point and thereby all curves
end at this point on the descending branch.
At this stage, the main aim is to assess the lateral load response of
the models having different RC shear wall and infill wall patterns.
Therefore, the results are simply discussed with a visual comparison of
the capacity curves.
The base shear capacity is increased by 43% in case of SW-2-BF
compared to NSW-BF. However, this increase is only 7% for SW-4-BF in
comparison to SW-2-BF. As one may expect, the addition of infill walls
results in a significant increase in initial rigidity and base shear capacity
in FI compared to BF models. The lateral rigidity increase was also the
case for OGS models by the contribution of infill walls at the upper
stories. However, this increment in rigidity which may stimulate a
scaled-up base shear demand in case of NSW-OGS seems not to have a
considerable enhancement in the base shear capacity in return. On the
other hand, the base shear capacities of OGS models are higher than the
companion BF models in SW-2 and SW-4 groups. This may be attributed
to the difference in lateral drift profiles of shear walls with respect to
frame-type structures where contribution of infill walls at the upper
stories may become more remarkable. The difference between lateral
response of FI and OGS models seems to decrease as the amount of
shear walls increases (i.e. in case of SW-4).
4.2. Time-history analyses results
The results of nonlinear time-history analyses are evaluated to
monitor any possible accumulated seismic demands at the ground story.
The inter-story drift ratios, distribution of plastic hinges and damage
assessment results of columns according to the seismic code of Turkey
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Structures 20 (2019) 822–831
[13] are considered to this end. Furthermore, the distribution of story
shear force in between columns, RC shear walls and infills is also taken
into consideration in order to evaluate the contribution of infill walls at
the ground story. A possible shear demand increase resulted by the infill
walls which may cause the shear failure of columns was also checked
[26]. However, the ultimate shear demand remained below the shear
capacity of columns in all cases. Therefore, shear failure was not con-
sidered in the discussions.
4.2.1. Shear force contribution of infill walls
The shear force contribution of infill walls at the ground story of FI
models is assessed at different stages of time-history analyses. This was
demonstrated in Fig. 4 for model NSW-FI-Managua. The time-history
for total shear force demand of ground story columns is given in
Fig. 4.a. The shear demand on the shear strut of only one infill member
at the ground story (i.e. Infill-01 in between A2-A3 in Fig. 1) is shown as
a sample in Fig. 4.b. It should be noted that all other infill members at
the same story reach the ultimate shear demand at the same instant.
The total base shear response at the ground story is presented in
Fig. 4.c. It is illustrated that the significant contribution of infill walls
which was about 38% at t = 2.565 s. decreases rapidly to 4.7% at
t = 3.51 s. when the ultimate base shear demand was reached for the
model. The contribution of infills ended and RC members governed the
shear response after that instant (Fig. 4). The same behavior was also
the case for all other time-history analyses of FI models with only
varying ratios. The average values of five ground motion records for the
contribution of ground story infill walls are shown in Table 4 at the
previously mentioned time instants.
In Table 4, it is clear that the addition of shear walls which become
dominant in shear response reduced the contribution of infill walls at
the ground story significantly (i.e. from 43.3% in NSW down to 23.0%
in SW-4). These results also indicate the vulnerability of FI models
(especially in group NSW) in terms of a probable soft-story problem due
to the vanishing of infill contribution at the ground story. The risk may
even be higher for FI buildings compared to OGS models considering
E. Akın Structures 20 (2019) 822–831

Fig. 4. Time histories of shear demands at the ground story for (a) columns, (b) infill walls and (c) total case.

Table 4
Contribution of ground story infills.
Group Contribution of ground story infills to the total story shear (%)
At the ultimate shear demand of At the ultimate base shear
infills demand
NSW 43.3 5.0
SW-2 27.6 3.5
SW-4 23.0 3.3
short column formation in case of a corner crushing at the ground story
infill, which may not be represented properly by macro modeling of
infills as applied in this study.
4.2.2. Inter-story drift ratios
The ultimate inter-story drift ratios were obtained from the time-
history analyses and presented in Fig. 5 as the drift profiles along the
building height. It should be noted that the inter-story drift ratios were
calculated by means of the average values of lateral displacements at
sixteen nodes at each story.
In Fig. 5, it is clear that the drift profile is strongly related to the
ground motion characteristics. In case of FI models, drift ratios of the
ground stories may be either decreased or increased by the existence of
infill walls compared to BF models. This may be related to the early
decay of infill wall contributions which takes place in varying scales
under different ground motions and/or the increased base shear de-
mand/capacity of FI models compared to BF (i.e. due to provided initial
rigidity by infill walls).
The OGS models have higher drift ratios at the ground story in
comparison to BF models in cases of Düzce, ImpVall and Managua
ground motions. On the other hand, these ultimate drift ratios were not
altered by the OGS compared to BF models when subjected to Düzce
and Kobe ground motions. A similar accumulation of lateral drifts at the
ground story was also the case for OGS models of SW-2, although it was
distributed to the first two stories and not in the same scale as group
NSW. The effect of infill walls in FI or OGS models seems to vanish
substantially in group SW-4 under the effect of shear walls which
dominate the lateral response and shift the higher drifts to the upper
stories.
4.2.3. Distribution of plastic hinges
The formation of a plastic hinge was defined by the examination of
moment-rotation hysteretic curves of frame members at the integration
sections. This was demonstrated in Fig. 6 for the bottom sections of
column C02 at the ground and third stories. It is explicit that an
“idealized yield point” has already been exceeded to define a “plastic
hinge formation” at the bottom section of ground story column
(Fig. 6.a); whereas the inelastic actions have not started at the bottom
section of third story column (Fig. 6.b).
The resulting distribution of plastic hinges on each frame along A-A
and BeB axes for all BF and OGS models which were analyzed by using
“Düzce” ground motion are presented in Fig. 7. These results are
compatible with the lateral drift ratio profiles in general. Besides, the
infill wall pattern with an OGS resulted in a significant accumulation of
inelastic seismic demands at the ground story compared to BF models in
group NSW. There is also an increase in inelastic demands at the ground
story columns of OGS model compared to BF in group SW-2. Yet, this
was not as apparent as in case of group NSW. On the other hand, the
distribution and number of plastic hinges were almost identical in both
BF and OGS models of group SW-4.
4.2.4. Damage assessment of columns
The nonlinear performance assessment of RC columns according to
the longitudinal reinforcement strain as provided in [13] was utilized in
order to evaluate the variation of damage state due to OGS. The strain
limits for the longitudinal reinforcements corresponding to the im-
mediate occupancy, life safety and collapse prevention seismic perfor-
mance levels are given as 0.01, 0.04 and 0.06, respectively [13]. The
damage states of the columns are classified as either slight, moderate,
serious or collapse referring these strain limits (Fig. 8). The resulting
percentages of columns in various damage regions are provided in

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E. Akın Structures 20 (2019) 822–831

Fig. 5. Lateral drift ratio profiles of the models.

Fig. 6. Moment-rotation hysteretic curves for the bottom section of column C02 at the (a) ground and (b) third stories.

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E. Akın
Fig. 7. Distribution of plastic hinges in BF and OGS models subjected to “Düzce” ground motion record.
Fig. 8. Damage regions for seismic performance assessment.
Fig. 9 for all models analyzed in group NSW.
It is clear that the absence of infill walls provoked a deterioration of
damage state for the ground story columns in case of NSW models
(Fig. 9). In these OGS models, the ratio of ground story columns that
appear in the collapse and serious damage regions becomes to be 10%
(i.e. except for Dinar ground motion) and 50%, respectively. On the
other hand, the ratios of damage state of columns in groups SW-2 and
SW-4 are presented in Fig. 10 only for Düzce ground motion record,
since the highest influence on the aforementioned behavior is observed
for this record. There is a slight increase in the damage of ground story
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Structures 20 (2019) 822–831
columns for OGS in comparison to BF models in group SW-2 (Fig. 10).
However, no difference takes place for different models of group SW-4,
which is identical under all ground motion records.
5. Conclusion
The conclusions explained herein should not be generalized without
due judgment or unless supported by further studies.
The pushover analyses results indicated that the infill walls at the
upper stories of OGS models increased the lateral rigidity compared to
companion BF models, though it was slightly lower than as could be
provided by the FI models. It may be stated that a higher base shear
demand may be engendered by this lateral rigidity alteration which is
compatible with the literature. The pushover capacity curves demon-
strate that all the OGS and FI models have the base shear capacity in-
crease that may countervail any possible demand increment, except
OGS model without shear walls (i.e. NSW). It should be also be men-
tioned that the base shear capacity increase of OGS models in groups
SW-2 and SW-4 is believed to be related to the higher contribution of
infill walls at the upper stories, as a result of modified lateral drift
profile due to shear walls.
The time-history analysis results for FI models reveal that the
E. Akın Structures 20 (2019) 822–831

Fig. 9. Damage states of columns in all models of group NSW.

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E. Akın
Fig. 10. Damage states of columns in SW-2 and SW-4 group models subjected to Düzce ground motion.
ground story infill walls attained the failure state before the ultimate
base shear demand was reached. This means that mainly the ground
story columns and/or shear walls should resist the lateral inertia forces
at the ultimate load level, which may also point out a possible soft-story
mechanism for the FI models.
The lateral drift profiles, distribution of the plastic hinges and da-
mage indicate that there may be a considerable accumulation of in-
elastic seismic demands at the ground story of RC frame type buildings
(i.e. without shear walls) when infills do not exist only at this story.
This was in such a scale to produce almost a column sideway me-
chanism due to plastic hinge formations at both ends of ground story
columns under all ground motion records. The lateral drift ratios at the
ground and first stories are generally higher in OGS models compared
to BF models. In group SW-2 with a shear wall area to floor area ratio of
0.36%, there is also an increase in the drift ratios and plastic hinge
formations at the ground story of OGS models in comparison to BF.
Although this also seems not to cause any column sideway mechanism
for the OGS models considered in this study, one may conclude that the
risk stands for the RC buildings with such a shear wall ratio. According
to the evaluation of all results related to the models having a shear wall
area to floor area ratio of 0.72% (i.e. group SW-4), it may be stated that
the shear walls become dominant on the behavior and the effect of infill
walls on the lateral response is almost diminished. Therefore, the risk
for a possible soft-story mechanism may be concluded to be minimized
for the buildings having this shear wall ratio. These results designate a
threshold value for the amount of shear walls necessary to eliminate the
soft-story deficiency for the code-compliant buildings with OGS, if such
an infill pattern is required. This threshold value may depend on certain
parameters, such as aspect ratio of infill walls, quality of infill walls and
relative rigidity of infills with respect to columns, related to the
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Structures 20 (2019) 822–831
properties of structural system and infill walls.
Declaration of Competing Interest
None.
Acknowledgements
None.
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