Seismic Performance of Open Ground Storey Building Strengthened with RC Shear Wall

Abstract

Open Ground Storey (OGS) framed buildings in which the ground storey is kept open without providing any infill walls and mainly used for parking, are increasingly common in urban areas. Vulnerability of this type of buildings has been exposed in the past earthquakes. OGS buildings are conventionally designed considering a bare frame analysis, ignoring the stiffness of the infill walls present in the upper storeys, which under-estimates the inter-storey drift and the force demand in the ground storey columns. However, seismic performance of this type of buildings is found to be consistently poor as demonstrated by the past earthquakes. Some of the literatures indicate that use of shear walls may enhance the performance of this kind of buildings without obstructing the free movement of vehicles in the parking lot. The present study is an attempt in this direction to study the performance of Open Ground Storey buildings strengthened with shear walls in a bay or two.