Comparing calculation methods of storey stiffness to control provision of soft storey in seismic codes

Numerous buildings have been damaged or destroyed in previous earthquakes by developing soft storey. Almost all the seismic codes have provisions to prevent soft storey in structures, most of them have recommended the ratio of stiffness between adjacent storeys, but none of them has proposed the method to calculate the storey stiffness. On the other hand a great number of previous researches on stiffness have been focused on approximate methods and accurate methods by using analytical softwares have been almost neglected. In this study, six accurate methods for calculating the storey stiffness have been studied on 246 two-bay reinforced concrete frames. It is shown with the results of the statistical study and structural analysis that method 3 in which there is no modification of the original model and the forces with triangular distribution similar to seismic forces are applied to the center of mass of all storeys has acceptable accuracy and desirable efficiency for designing and controlling structures.