POSSIBILITY OF DRIFT CONTROL IN SOFTSTORIED RCC BUILDINGS IN HIGHER SEISMIC ZONES

Traditionally building codes have emphasized life safety as their primary goal, because of the potential social and economic impacts of the loss of function of building. There is a new focus on the control of damage in seismic design, although there are multiple components in the control of damage. This paper focuses on one aspect to be a significant factor called interstorey drift. This problem is much serious particularly in case of a soft storey buildings resulting much stress concentration at ground floor columns, consequently makes the ground floor weaker to withstand the upper floor loads. So it is necessary to consider the structure's interstorey drift in determining the level and type of damages that can be expected in buildings. A key issue in limiting drift related damage is to obtain the best estimate of the displacements and storey drift associated with nonlinear force deflection characteristics of the structure's more accurate solutions for the drift calculations. It can be obtained through considerations of nonlinear time history analysis or response spectrum procedure.