Effect of openings on lateral behaviors of corrugated plate module walls and high-rise modular buildings

Abstract

In modular buildings with container-like modules, the corrugated plates and the opening conditions were proven to have significant influence on the module rigidity. But the effect of openings on failure modes of modules and lateral sway performance of modular buildings were rarely considered. In this paper, shear performance of long modules with different kinds of openings and different beam sections were investigated. A simplified analytical model of perforated module sidewalls was proposed and was applied to the seismic structural analyses of high-rise modular frames. Results indicated that the opening subdivided the corrugated plate sidewalls, which mechanism led to the postponement of plate buckling and the increased elastic shear strengths comparing to intact walls. High stress concentrations and regional plate buckling firstly occurred around the opening, and then the buckled regions expanded toward two side columns as the increase of shear drifts. The frame beams and regional corrugated plates above or below the opening behaved like a kind of coupling beams that channeled short corrugated sidewalls at two sides of the opening. The bending rigidity of the coupling beam system determined the composition effect of short corrugated plates at two sides of the opening, and then directly influenced the drift performance of individual modules and the whole modular buildings.