Effect of open-ground storey on RC frame buildings incorporating soil–structure interaction

In practice, buildings with open-ground storey (OGS) are the most common types of vertically irregular buildings. Such a building may fail due to the low stiffness strength of the ground storey. Such failures are due to faulty design of not considering the effect of infill and soil–structure interaction in the building model. RC frame buildings of various heights are analysed as per BIS 1893 (Indian standard criteria for earthquake resistant design of structures. Bureau of Indian Standards 2016), and the performance of buildings are evaluated through nonlinear time history analysis (NLTHA) and pushover analysis. Initially, buildings are analysed without considering infill strut elements in the computer model and, later on, the infill strut elements are incorporated while analysing. Five different spectrum compatible ground motions (SCGMs) are considered for NLTHA. This study evaluates the performance of ground soft storey buildings. It is observed that the difference in the period of the OGS building without strut elements is higher than the OGS building with strut elements; after introducing the strut element in the OGS buildings, the IDR is reduced by a significant factor for all buildings. Buildings with strut elements, IDR is within the acceptable limit of codal provision (0.004) except for the ten-storey building. Whereas in building without strut elements, IDR is > 0.004 for all the buildings. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.