Analytical Design of Irregular Buildings founded on soft soil

Abstract In modern day, due to the need of unique architectural appearance or aesthetics of building, irregularities in mass, stiffness and symmetry may get disturbed, making the whole structure vulnerable to certain damages either minor or major. Some of the functional considerations of these structures are use of ground floor as car parking in residential buildings, use of basement as car parking in malls, etc. Seismic range is one the most important factors to be considered to analyze any irregular structure. In this study, the design of different G+6 structures having vertical regularity was done. These irregular structure models were compared with a regular G+6 structure having similar properties as other structures. For the designing and analysis of these structures, use of StaadPro software was done. It is one of the most used software, whenever it comes to the digital analysis of any structure. Different types of Vertical irregularities like mass irregularity, Vertical Setback Irregularity, Stiffness Irregularity (Discontinuous Column, Middle weak storey and Bottom Weak Storey) were considered for the analysis. The Seismic Zone for the structure is considered to be Delhi (Seismic Zone IV) with a Seismic Factor of 0.24. All the model structures were compared for the parameters of their Storey Drift and Storey Displacement. For irregular buildings though, certain damages/fatigue may be observed in some structures but the structures will not fail and will be serviceable for a long time with proper care. It was observed that the structures with stiffness irregularity showed the most increase in storey displacement and storey drift values.