Inelastic seismic demand of low-rise buildings with soil-flexibility

Relying on the ductile behaviour of structures during earthquake, building codes introduce response reduction factors (R) to reduce design forces in earthquake resistant design. However, applicability of such factors has not been systematically explored for low-rise buildings with stiff periods. Present study is an attempt to address this issue. Both elasto-plastic and degrading hysteresis behaviour for lateral load-resisting structural elements are considered herein, while sub-soil is idealized as linear and elasto-plastic in parallel. The study recognizes that inelastic response for short period systems is very sensitive to R and may be phenomenally amplified even for small R due to soil–structure interaction implying restrictive applicability of dual-design philosophy. Limited study on the plan-asymmetric low-rise buildings depicts that inelastic response of the asymmetric structure relative to its symmetric counterpart is not appreciably influenced due to soil–structure interaction (SSI). The study also confirms that equivalent single story model characterized by the lowest period rather than the fundamental one of the real system tends to yield conservative estimation of inelastic demand at least for the short-period systems.