Case Studies to Investigate The Philosophy of Analysis and Design of some Important

Structural Elements 2014

Story Stiffness
A multi-storied building can be considered to be deflected in the fashion as shown in picture.
In case of a building with floors idealised a Rigid Diaphragms, the masses distributed over the
diaphragm can be assumed to be accumulated at the center of mass of the floor. The inertial
force like the seismic force will act through center of mass of the floor. In order to have a
compatible deflected shape we can assume that the center of mass is the master node for
that floor. The deflection of the story is being related to the deflection of the master node of
the rigid diaphragm. In STAAD.Pro, the Rigid Diaphragm means that the diaphragm is rigid-
capable of undergoing rigid motion in XZ plane.

Δ3

Δ2

Δ1

In the above picture, the black points are master nodes. The story stiffness is defined as the
inverse of inter-story drift when a unit load is applied at that story only.

The unit load applied is along X, Z and θ Y directions.

Consider the displacement of 2nd story. The displacements are:

Story 1: ΔX1, ΔZ1, θY1;

Story 2: ΔX2, ΔZ2, θY2;

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 Case Studies to Investigate The Philosophy of Analysis and Design of some Important
Structural Elements 2014

Relative Displacement for story 2 is:

RX2 = ΔX2 - ΔX1;

RZ2 = ΔZ2 – ΔZ1;

RθY2 = θY2 - θY1

Story Stiffness along X =1/((ΔX2 – ΔX1) );

Story Stiffness along Z =1/((ΔZ2 – ΔZ1) );

Story Stiffness θY = 1/((θY2 - θY1))

Rest is the same for all the other stories.

Note: This story stiffness is not the same as column story stiffness which is calculated as nCol
* 12EI/L3

Understanding the philosophy using an Example

Consider a structure modelled in STAAD.Pro as shown below:

One can compute the center of mass using mass moment theorem. As this a symmetric
structure, the center of mass will be at the node # 13 which has been created and labelled in
the above picture. Now for the structure to behave as a rigid entity and emulate the model
shown in the previous page, the MASTER NODE option in STAAD.Pro is used wherein node 13
is made the master node and all the rest of the nodes in the same level are rigid linked to it
so that the displacements obtained from analysis in node 13 will be replicated for all the other

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 Case Studies to Investigate The Philosophy of Analysis and Design of some Important
Structural Elements 2014

nodes on the same floor. For this purpose, node # 13 has been declared to be linked rigidly
with the other nodes in XZ plane. The following command instructs the program to achieve
the same.

SLAVE ZX MASTER 13 JOINT 1 TO 6

A load of 1 kip is applied in X direction and the structure is analyzed. Similarly a load of 1 kip
is applied in Z direction and analyzed separately. Finally a rotation of 1 kip-in is applied about
Y axis and analyzed separately. It should be kept in mind that since all the loads are in plane,
the structure should be modelled with rigidity in the ZX plane only, i.e. the horizontal plane.

Calculation:

From analysis of the model we obtain the following:

X direction displacement = 0.00217963 in

Z direction displacement = 0.00231307 in

Y direction rotation = 0.00148914 rad

Story Stiffness X direction = 1/ (0.00217963 – 0.0) = 458.79 kip/in = 80346.4116 KN/m

Story Stiffness Z direction = 1/ (0.00231307 – 0.0) = 432.33 kip/in = 75711.8339 KN/m

Rotation in degree = 3.14 X 0.00148914/ 180 = 2.5990443e-005

Story Stiffness in Y rotation = 1/ (2.5990443e-005 – 0.0) = 38475.681 kip/in = 6738121.8

KN/m

These results match with a similar model with a rigid floor diaphragm wherein the Story
Stiffness is programmatically calculated.

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