OPTIMUM EARTHQUAKE RESPONSE OF TALL BUILDINGS

The present study discusses the optimum earthquake response of tall buildings. The possibility of design approach is based on ‘expendable top storey ’ for the tall buildings. If such a behaviour is feasible one can conceive of a structure whose top storey is permitted and designed to undergo large inelastic deformations while reducing damage in the lower storey. The concept was first proposed in an earlier research (Jagadish and Raghu Prasad). Such a concept juxtaposes the often-mentioned ‘soft first storey’ concept. The question is how to design a tall building so as to cause yielding of the uppermost floor or a few upper flowers, thus leaving the lower floor to be within the elastic limit? Recently observed that if a building has members size are derived for buildings designed for different values of R, it may be possible to optimize the energy absorption