Field testing of a soft-storey building in Melbourne

Building structures possessing vertical stiffness irregularity with an open ground storey are common in areas of low and moderate seismicity. These types of structures translate back and forth like an inverted pendulum during earthquake shaking, with the columns in the open storey often susceptible to severe damage and collapse. This paper presents an overview of a collaborative research project which has been undertaken by Swinburne University of Technology and The University of Melbourne, Australia. The paper presents outcomes of unique experimental field testing on a four-storey soft storey building in Melbourne. The major aim of the project is to study the load deflection behaviour of soft storey buildings when subjected to lateral loading and to assess the lateral load and drift capacity. The results from the field test will be used to develop a representative seismic performance assessment procedure for soft storey buildings subject to different levels of ground shaking using force and displacement principles