Precast Concrete Coupled Shear Wall System of Modular High-rises Without In Situ Cores

Abstract

Modular construction has been widely employed to build low-to-medium-rise buildings but limited for high-rises partly due to the knowledge gap about the lateral force resistance of modular high-rises. Most modular high-rises adopt in situ cores which still require substantial onsite works to resist lateral loads. Previous research developed a module wall system for modular high-rises to replace in situ cores. This study aims to propose coupling beams concealed in corridor slabs for modular high-rises without in situ cores. A 40-story public housing building in Hong Kong (HK) was adopted for the case study. A finite element (FE) model of precast concrete coupled shear walls was formulated using the OpenSees software and validated by reported test results. For the case building in the scenarios with and without coupling beams, the seismic and wind performances were respectively compared according to the results of the nonlinear dynamic analysis using the FE model and those of the nonlinear static analysis using an ETABS model of the building. The study not only proves that precast concrete coupled shear wall system is technically feasible to resist the seismic and wind loads for modular high-rises in HK but also facilitates the application of precast concrete modules in high-rise buildings.