The upper masonry layers of multi-story brick structures with bottom-frame were usually severely destroyed in an actual earthquake. But, it is not clear that whether the design method of equal rigidity in vertical direction of upper masonry layer is reasonable. In this paper, four contrastive models of bottom frame structures were established though ABAQUS, and the different design methods of variable vertical stiffness were used for the upper masonry layers. The seismic response results show that the upper masonry layers especially the transit...
