ABSTRACT
In early research simplified single-storey models were used when investigating plan irregular structures because they could be easily parameterised and the influence of structural factors on the seismic response could be more easily quantified (Tso and Bozorgnia, (1986), Chandler and Duan, (1997), Goel, (1997), Ghersi and Rossi, (2001)). The relative ease of computation required for the single-storey models and the reduced number of influencing parameters as compared to more complex structural systems made the single-storey simplified structures attractive to researchers. In more recent years, with the increase in computational power and greater availability of three-dimensional non-linear finite element software, the level of research into the seismic response of more realistic multi-storey plan irregular structures has received a greater level of attention. Some researchers have investigated the extension of results based on single-storey models to multi-storey structures (Fajfar et al., (2005)). Other researchers have investigated more realistic multi-storey framed structure and ignored results based on single-storey models (Stathopoulos and Anagnostopoulos, (2005)).
