Effect of Shear Wall on the RC Multistoried Buildings having Soft Storey Irregularity: A Review

Abstract

In today's Modern era, open first storeys are an inescapable element of many metropolitan multistory buildings due to constraints of space and other such architectural specifications. This is usually used in the ground storey to accommodate parking or reception lobbies. The higher storeys contain brick wall panels while the lower storeys having parking space are void of such masonry infills. The upper level is substantially stiffer than the open ground floor due to the existence of infill walls throughout the higher storey except for the bottom storey. Due to this fact, the stories with infills present at the above level moves as if being a single mass in form of block and the open ground storey at the ground level thereby creates the major portion of the building’s displacement in the horizontal direction. In other words, during earthquake shaking, these types of structures sway back and forth like an inverted pendulum, putting a lot of stress on the ground level columns and beams. The stories having infills at the upper levels experience a lesser inter storey drift effect while the below stories having soft storey has higher drifts value when both are compared. The inter-storey drift in the soft first layer, on the other hand, is significant. Thereby, the ground floor columns and beams must have a sufficient strength and ductility. The effect of soft storey can be achieved or provided at any particular level of the multistory building in order to satisfy the intended functions and requirements. Hence, in order to ensure the true seismic demands and other such effects of soft storey in the concerned RC building, it is better to analyze and review the performance of such buildings having kept lower stories as open. Hence, in the present paper, various such effects of open ground storey building are seen and its seismic performances are then being reviewed in order to properly ensure its capacity against the lateral seismic loads.