A Study on Optimum Distribution of Story Shear Force Coefficient for Seismic Design of Multi-story Structure

The story shear force distributions of most seismic design codes generally reflect the influences of higher vibration modes based on the elastic deformations of structures. However, as the seismic design allows for the plastic behavior of a structure, the story shear force distribution shall be effective after it is yielded due to earthquake excitation. Hence this study conducted numerical analyses on the story shear force distributions of most seismic design codes to find out the characteristics of how a structure is damaged between stories. Analysis results show that the more forces are distributed onto high stories, the lower its concentration is and the more energy is absorbed. From the results, this study proposes the optimum story shear force distribution and its calculation formula that make the damages uniformly distributed onto whole stories. Consequently, the story damage distribution from the optimum calculation formula was considerably more stable than existing seismic design codes.