Abstract:
The growth of population density and shortage of land in
urban areas are two major problems for all developing countries
including India. In order to mitigate these two problems,
the designers resort to high-rise buildings, which are rapidly
increasing in number, with various architectural configurations
and ingenious use of structural materials. However,
earthquakes are the most critical loading condition for all
landbased structures locatedinthe seismically active regions.
The Indian subcontinent is divided into different seismic
zones as indicated by IS 1893 (Part 1) [1], facilitating the
designer to provide adequate protection against earthquake.
A recent earthquake in India on January 26th, 2001 caused
considerable damage to a large number of RCC high-rise
buildings (number of storey varies from 4 to 15) and tremendous
loss of life. The reasons were (a) most of the buildings
had soft and weak ground storey that provided open space for
parking, (b) poor quality of concrete in columns, and (c) poor
detailing of the structural design (http://www.nicee.org/eqeiitk/
uploads/EQR Bhuj.pdf).