Seismic performance assessment of reinforced concrete hilly buildings with open story

Abstract

Abstract This study focuses on investigating the effect of one or more open stories in reinforced concrete hilly buildings. Two building configurations, i.e., (i) stepback and (ii) split-foundation, with three different story ratios, are considered. Open stories are provided at different levels in a building according to the prospective location of the approach road level. These buildings are subjected to bi-directional earthquake excitation, and non-linear dynamic analyses are performed under a suite of 22 ground motion records. Dynamic characteristics and seismic responses such as peak inter-story drift ratio, peak floor acceleration, peak roof displacement, and maximum story shear of the buildings are investigated. A probabilistic performance assessment of these buildings with different probable locations of the open story is presented. In general, the probabilistic assessment reveals that the presence of the open story significantly reduces the seismic performance of these buildings. Moreover, the buildings with the open story at the uppermost foundation level are found to be the most vulnerable under earthquake excitation.