Seismic Protection of Soft Storey Buildings Using Energy Dissipation Device

Poor and devastating performance of the soft storey buildings during earthquakes always advocated against the construction of such buildings with soft ground storey. Increasing construction of multistoried buildings with soft ground story however indicates that the practical need of an open space to provide car parking space far overweighs the advice issued by the engineering community. In past, several researchers have addressed the vulnerability of soft storey due to seismic loading . As the conventional local/member level strengthening techniques (steel jacketing, concrete jacketing, steel caging, FRP jacketing, etc.) may not be feasible to enhance the seismic performance of the deficient reinforced concrete structures beyond a certain limit, the improvement of seismic performance of this type of deficient structures by reducing the seismic demand through the supplemental energy dissipation mechanisms has warranted the focus of the researchers. In recent years efforts have been made by researchers to develop the concept of energy dissipation or supplemental damping into a workable technology, and a number of these devices have been installed in structures, throughout the world. The effectiveness of sliding friction damper, in improving the seismic performance of the soft storey reinforced concrete frame building, has been investigated in this paper. The response parameters, such as absolute acceleration, interstorey drift and base shear have been investigated for the example soft storey frame equipped with friction damper. The present study demonstrates the effectiveness of the friction damper in controlling the response behavior of the soft storey frame building due to significant energy dissipation by the friction damper at the soft storey level.