Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea ISSN:1229-3059(Print) 2287-2302(Online) 한국전산구조공학회 논문집

There have been many instances of damage to buildings with soft stories, and it is important to consider vertically irregular buildings when evaluating the seismic performance of existing buildings. However, because conventional methods do not easily reflect vertical irregularities with sufficient accuracy, it is possible to underestimate or overestimate the seismic performance of buildings with vertical irregularities. This study aims to develop a seismic performance evaluation method for vertically irregular buildings using the stiffness-based soft story ratio (SSR), which is a parameter that represents the ratio of the demand and the capacity for displacement and refers to the ratio of displacement concentration in buildings. The seismic performance evaluation method developed in this study is compared with the conventional seismic performance evaluation method for four piloti buildings, using the first-floor column as a variable. Conventional seismic performance evaluation methods often overestimate the seismic performance for models in which vertical irregularities are maximized. However, results of the proposed seismic performance evaluation method are identical to those from a detailed evaluation for all models. Therefore, it is considered that the proposed seismic performance evaluation method can provide more precise seismic performance evaluation results than conventional methods in the case of piloti buildings, where vertical irregularities are maximized.