Soft Story
Soft Story Properties are Inherently Weak
- Poor detailing of structural joints
- Inadequate reinforcing steel.
- Inappropriate anchoring of beam and slab reinforcement.
- Insufficient reinforcing steel in columns with large aspect ratio.
Soft Story Buildings
A soft story building is one in which one or more floors have windows, wide doors, large unobstructed commercial spaces, or other openings in places where a shear wall would normally be required for stability as a matter of earthquake engineering design.
An example of a soft story building is an apartment building of two or more stories located over a ground level with large openings, such as a parking garage
These buildings will not stand up to major seismic activity because they do not have the proper support system in place.
Multi-Story Buildings
Soft Story buildings will collapse during an earthquake
Multi-story buildings such as apartment complexes and commercial spaces are one of two types: hard story or soft story. Hard-story buildings have walls that extend all the way around the perimeter of the building acting as shear wall required for stability as a matter of earthquake engineering design.
This is a hard story building used to test the strength of specially designed hardware in an earthquake simulation.
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