SEISMIC PERFORMANCE OF TYPICAL OPEN GROUND STORY

FRAMED BUILDINGS
Ranjith Kumar CH1, Robin Davis P 2, Pradip Sarkar3 and Haran pragalath D C 4

ABSTRACT
Car parking space for residential apartments in populated cities is a matter of major concern.
Hence the trend has been to utilize the ground storey of the building itself for parking. Open
Ground Storey (OGS) buildings are those types of buildings in which the ground storey is
free of any infill masonry walls. These types of buildings are very common in India for
parking provisions. In the present study, a typical ten storied OGS framed building is
considered. The design forces for the ground storey columns are evaluated based on various
codes such as Indian, Euro, Israel and Bulgarian codes. The performance of each building is
studied using the fragility analysis method introduced by Cornell (2002). Uncertainty in
concrete, steel and masonry walls are accounted. Thirty computational models are developed
in the program Seismostruct (2012) for nonlinear dynamics analysis for each case. For the
analysis, a set of thirty natural time histories is selected and modified to match the Response
spectrum as per Indian code (IS 1893-2002). In the present study, fragility curves are
generated for each building, by developing a probabilistic seismic demand model according to
power law. The relative performances of each building designed as per various codes are
compared using fragility curves. It is also found that the application of magnification factor
applied only to the ground storey may lead to increase in the force demand in the adjacent
storey, which is taken care by Israel code.

Keyword: Fragility curves; Open ground storey (OGS); Magnification factor; Peak ground
acceleration (PGA)

1. INTRODUCTION
Need of space became very important in urban areas due to increase in population especially
in developing countries like India. Need of parking space takes important vital role while
planning a building. To provide adequate parking spaces, ground storey of the building is
utilised. These types of buildings having no infilled walls in ground storey, but in-filled in all
upper storeys, are called Open Ground Storey (OGS) buildings. Upper stories of these
1
M.Tech, NIT Rourkela, Odisha 769 008, India. email: 211CE2025@nitrkl.ac.in
2
Assistant Professor, NIT Rourkela, Odisha 769 008, India. email: robind@nitrkl.ac.in
3
AssociateProfessor, NIT Rourkela, Odisha 769 008, India. email: sarkarp@nitrkl.ac.in
4
Research scholar, NIT Rourkela, Odisha 769008, India email: haran5441@nitrkl.ac.in
buildings are stiff and the inter-storey drifts will be small, resulting in large curvatures, shear
forces and bending moments of the ground storey columns. Hence, the strength demand on
the columns in the ground storey of the buildings is very high. The majority of this type of
buildings had collapsed in the past earthquakes in many countries. Such type of failure can
possibly be avoided if stiffness and strength of the ground soft storey are increased. Ten
storey OGS framed building is chosen for this study and designed for magnification factors as
per various codes such as Indian, Euro, Israel and Bulgarian. Performances of these buildings
are evaluated using fragility curves using Probabilistic seismic demand model as per Cornell
(2002).

2. METHODOLOGY
2.1 Development of Fragility curves

A fragility function represents the probability of exceedance of the selected Engineering

Demand Parameter (EDP) for a selected structural limit state (DS) for a specific ground
motion intensity measure (IM). These curves are cumulative probability distributions that
indicate the probability that a component/system will be damaged to a given damage state or a
more severe one, as a function of a particular demand. Fragility curve can be obtained for
each damage state and can be expressed in closed form as using Eq. 1
s
ln d
P(C D 0 / IM )
sc
(1)
2
d / IM c
2


where, C is the drift capacity, D is the drift demand, Sd is the median of the demand and Sc is
the median of the chosen damage state (DS). d/IM and c are dispersion in the intensity
measure and capacities respectively. Eq. 1 can be rewritten as Eq. 2 for component fragilities
(Nielson, 2005) as,
ln IM ln IM m
P( DS / IM ) (2)

comp

Where, IMm = exp ( ), a and b are the regression coefficients of the probabilistic

Seismic Demand Model (PSDM) and the dispersion component, is given as,

(3)

The dispersion in capacity, c is dependent on the building type and construction quality. For
c, ATC 58(2009) 50% draft suggests 0.10, 0.25 and 0.40 depending on the quality of
construction. In this study, dispersion in capacity has been assumed as 0.25. It has been
suggested by Cornell et. al (2002) that the estimate of the median engineering demand
parameter (EDP) can be represented by a power law model as given in Eq. 4.
( ) (4)
In this study, inter-storey drift () at the first floor level (ground storey drift) is taken as the
engineering damage parameter (EDP) and peak ground acceleration (PGA) as the intensity
measure (IM)
2.2 Example frame

A typical ten-storey six-bay OGS RC frame that represents a symmetric building in plan is
considered in the present study. Grades of concrete and steel were taken as M25 and Fe415
respectively. Typical bay width and column height are selected as 3m and 3.2m respectively.
The dead load of the slab (3 m 3 m panel) is assumed as 2.5 kN/m2 . A live load of 3 kN/m2
is considered at all floor levels except top floor, where it is considered as 1.5kN/m2. Seismic
load is taken according to IS 1893 (2002). As the building is an OGS frame, the ground storey
columns are to be designed taking into account of the magnification factor.

2.2.1 National Code Prescribed Methods

In most cases, ground-story columns were either damaged severely or failed completely, there
by damaging the buildings. Strengthening of open ground story is recommended by national
codes of a few countries by multiplying the design seismic forces with magnification factors
varying from 1.5 to 5 of columns in Open ground storey. Indian seismic code (IS 1983 -2002)
requires beams and columns of the open ground story to be designed for 2.5 times the design
seismic forces. Bulgarian Seismic Code (1987) recommends the seismic design forces for
soft storey in masonry-inlled RC frames are required to be increased by three times the
design seismic forces for a regular bare frame. According to the Eurocode 8 (CEN 2003)
increasing the design forces for the soft ground storey columns by 1.5 to 4.68 times
depending upon several factors. Israeli seismic code (SII 1995) also recommends increasing
design forces for members of open ground story and also for one adjacent storey above by
2.13.0 times the actual design forces, depending on the ductility level of the building.Table-1
summarises the values for MFs suggested by above codes.

2.3 Ground motion data:

The number of ground motions required for an unbiased estimate of the structural response is
3 or 7 as per ASCE 7-05. However, ATC 58 50% draft recommends a suite of 11 pairs of
ground motions for a reliable estimate of the response quantities. ASCE/SEI 41 (2005)
suggests 30 recorded ground motions to meet the spectral matching criteria for NPP
infrastructures. A set of thirty Far-Field natural Ground Motions are collected from Haselton
and Deierlein (2007). These are converted to match with IS 1893 (2002)) spectrum using a
program, WavGen developed by Mukherjee and Gupta (2002).

Table 1. Magnification factors as per various codes and design details of the ground storey
columns

Ground
Storey %
Expression M.F column Reinforcement
Code Criteria
for MF considered section provided

Ki
<0.7
Indian K i 1 2.5 2.5 750 x 750 3.57
0.6R

R=3.5 for low Ground storey

ductility column:-3.8
Ki 2.1 650 x 650
<0.7
K i 1 R=5 for First storey
Israel
medium column:- 2.08
ductility
(2.1 3.0)
Ki
<0.5
Bulgarian K i 1 3 3.0 800 x 800 3.93

Drastic VRW
1
Euro
reduction of VED 4.68 1250 x 1250 3.86
infill in any
1.5 4.68
storey
Ki- Lateral stiffness of ith storey considered, R - Response reduction factor
VRW strength of infill in the storey above, VEd sum of design lateral force in the storey

2.4 Sampling

Material properties of concrete, steel and masonry used in the construction are random in
nature. To incorporate the uncertainties in concrete, steel and masonry strength, a Latin
Hypercube sampling scheme is adopted using MATLAB (2009) program. Table 2 shows the
mean and covariance of each random variable considered. The values for concrete and steel
are taken from Ranganathan (1999) and that for masonry is taken from Kaushik et. al. (2007).
 6 bay @ 3 m
6 bay @ 3 m
Frame considered

10 storeys @ 3.2 m
6 bay @ 3 m
(b) plan (a) elevation
Fig. 1: Ten storey framed building with its plan and elevation

Table 2. Details of random variables used in LHS scheme

Material Variable Mean COV

Distribution Remarks
(%)
Concrete fck (MPa) 30.28 21 Normal Uncorrelated
Steel fy (MPa) 468.90 10 Normal Uncorrelated
Masonry fm (Mpa) 6.60 20 Normal Uncorrelated

2.5 Modelling & Analysis:

30 models are considered for each case, which is modelled in Seismostruct (2009) for
nonlinear analysis. Concrete is modelled as per Mander et al. (1988) and reinforcements using
a bilinear steel model with kinematic Strain hardening. Infilled masonry walls are modelled
according to Crisafulli (1997) which takes into account of the stiffness and strength
degradations in each cycle, which is implemented in Seismostruct. Hilber-Hughes Taylor
series scheme is adopted for the time step analysis and skyline technique is used for matrix
storage.

2.6 Performance level:

Three performance levels, Immediate Occupancy (IO), Life safety (LS) and collapse
Prevention (CP) are considered in the present study. The inter-storey drift (Sc) corresponding
to these performance levels has been taken as 1%, 2% and 4% respectively as per FEMA356
(2000).

3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The fragility curves are generated for each OGS building frame as per the methodology
discussed above. The inter-storey drift at the ground storey is considered as the damage
parameter to study the performance of the ground storey. The application of magnification
factors increases the strength and stiffness of the ground storey columns. This may leads to
the increase the force and displacement demands in the adjacent storey.

As it is required to study the performance of storeys other than ground storey the exceedance
probability of inter-storey drift for the other storeys are shown in the Fig 2. Fig. 2a shows the
storey wise exceedance probability of the building designed using magnification factor as per
Indian code. This shows that the first storey is more vulnerable than the second and ground
storeys. This implies that performance of the above storeys also to be addressed while using
magnification factors. The same behaviour is observed for all other codes considered except
the Israel code (as shown in Fig 2d). Codes other than Israel codes apply magnification
factors only in the ground storey, as high in the range of 2.5 to 4.68. But Israel code applies a
factor of 2.1 for both ground and first storey which reduces the exceedance probability
considerably and uniformly in all storeys, compared other codes.

4. CONCLUSIONS

The performance of typical OGS buildings designed considering various magnification

factors according to different codes are studied using fragility curves. Uncertainties in
concrete, steel and masonry are incorporated using LHS scheme. It is found that the
performances of the OGS frames, in terms of ground storey drift is increasing in the
increasing order of magnification factors used by various codes for all the performance levels.
Application of magnification factor only in the ground storey may not provide the required
performance in all the other stories. It is found from the study that the OGS buildings
designed using Israeli code, which considered the magnification factor in the adjacent storey,
performed better compared to that of others. This indicates that the implementation of
magnification factor in the adjacent storeys may be required to improve the performance of
OGS buildings.
 2b BULGARIAN CODE
2a INDIAN CODE

2c EURO CODE 2d ISRAEL CODE

Fig 2. Comparison of storeys wise for different code considered

5. REFERENCES:

1) ATC 58 50% Draft, 2009. Guidelines for Seismic Performance Assessment of

Buildings, Applied Technology council, Redwood City, CA.

2) Blandon, C.A. [2005] Implementation of an Infill Masonry Model for Seismic

Assessment of Existing Buildings, Individual Study, European School for Advanced
Studies in Reduction of Seismic Risk (ROSE School), Pavia, Italy.

3) Bulgarian Seismic Code. (1987). Code for design of buildings and structures in
seismic regions. Bulgarian Academy of Science Committee of Territorial and Town
System at the Council of Ministers, Soa, Bulgaria.

4) Cornell, C. Allin, Fatemeh Jalayer, Ronald O. Hamburger and Douglas A Foutch,

2002. The Probabilistic Basis for the 2000 SAC/FEMA Steel Moment Frame
Guidelines, Journal of Structural Engineering 128(4), 526-533

5) Crisafulli F. J. (1997) Seismic Behaviour of reinforced concrete structures with

masonry infills, Ph.D. Thesis. University of Canterbury. New Zealand.
6) European Committee of Standardization (CEN). (2003). Design of structures for
earthquake resistance. Part 1: General rules, seismic actions and rules for buildings.
prEN1998-1, Eurocode 8, Brussels, Belgium.

7) Federal Emergency Management Agency (2000) Prestandard and Commentary for

the Seismic Rehabilitation of Buildings, FEMA 356. Washington D. C.

8) Haselton, C.B. and G.G. Deierlein (2007). Assessing Seismic Collapse Safety of
Modern Reinforced Concrete Frame Buildings, Blume Earthquake Engineering
Research Center Technical Report No. 156, Stanford University, 313 pp.

9) IS 456 (2000). Indian Standard for Plain and Reinforced Concrete Code of Practice,
Bureau of Indian Standards, New Delhi. 2000

10) IS 1893 Part 1 (2002),Indian Standard Criteria for Earthquake Resistant Design of
Structures, Bureau of Indian Standards, New Delhi.

11) Kaushik, H. B., Rai, D. C., and Jain, S. K. (2006). Code approaches to seismic design
of masonry infilled reinforced concrete frames: A state of-the-art review. Earthquake
Spectra, 22(4), 961983.

12) Kaushik, H. B., Rai, D. C., and Jain, S. K. (2007). Stress-strain characteristics of clay
brick masonry under uniaxial compression. J. Mater.Civ. Eng., 19 (9), 728739.

13) Kaushik, H.B., Rai, D.C. and Jain, S.K (2009). Effectiveness of Some Strengthening
Options for Masonry-Infilled RC Frames with Open First Story Journal of Structural
Engineering, Vol. 135, No. 8,925937.

14) MatLab (2007), MatLab - Programming software for all kind of problems [online]. <
http:// www.mathworks.com/ > (July 20, 2012)

15) Mander J.B., Priestley M.J.N., Park R. (1988) "Theoretical stress-strain model for
confined concrete," Journal of Structural Engineering, Vol. 114, No. 8, pp. 1804-1826.

16) Mukherjee S and V.K.Gupta, (2002).Wavelet-based generation of spectrum

compatible time-histories, Soil dynamics and Earthquake engineering 22, 799-804

17) Nielson, B.G, (2005). Analytical Fragility Curves for Highway Bridges in Moderate
Seismic zones, Ph.D. Thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology.

18) Ranganathan, R. (1999), Structural reliability analysis and design, Jaico Publishing
House, Mumbai.

19) Seismostruct (2009), SeismoStruct - A computer program for static and dynamic
nonlinear analysis of framed structures, [online]. < http://www.seismosoft.com/ >

20) Standards Institution of Israel (SII). (1995). Design provisions for earthquake
resistance of structures. SI 413, Tel-Aviv, Israel.