Seismic Vibration Attenuation of a Soft Story Reinforced Concrete Multistoried Building with the Deployment of a Negative Stiffness Device

Structures that are located in seismic zones are vulnerable to severe seismic activities. Subsequently, the structures are subjected to enhanced base shear, acceleration, and displacements, which diminish the structure’s seismic performance. Several dampers have been implemented to control the seismic responses of buildings, but they have their own limitations. Therefore, a negative stiffness device, (NSD), which is a truly passive device, has been introduced, producing a true negative stiffness, thereby introducing reduced stiffness in the building. In the current study, a 9-story open-ground reinforced concrete frame building is considered to assess its seismic performance with the implementation of NSD at different locations in the ground story by considering 24 models. The optimum properties of the NSD suited for the building are evaluated by performing the nonlinear static analysis and performed various iterations to get optimum design parameters. The variables considered for the current investigation are the base shear, individual story acceleration, displacement, and drift of the structure. Moreover, the optimal location and number of NSDs are also evaluated. When the structure is susceptible to seven distinct seismic events, a nonlinear time history analysis (NLTHA) is performed. The deployment of NSD is found to be efficient in improving the seismic behavior of the structure. The seismic parameters, such as base shear and acceleration of the structure, are attenuated by 30% and 25%, respectively, and the optimum models are considered keeping in view of best attenuation of base shear, acceleration, and the number of NSDs deployed.