Stiffened-story wall-frame tall building structure

Abstract

This paper proposes a new concept to increase the lateral stiffness of wall-frame tall building structures by stiffening a story of the frame system either at the top or at an intermediate optimized level. The shear rigidity of the frame system is increased in a story level by infilling one or more bays of the frames in that story with concrete or masonry panels, or adding bracing to the story, or increasing the sizes of the columns and girders surrounding the story. The efficiency of the concept and the evaluation of the parameters involved in the behaviour of a stiffened-story structure are demonstrated with the help of a continuum model solution. The authors show that in some structures the lateral stiffness could be increased by as much as 70%. The technique is then applied to an example structure which is analysed both with the continuum model and a stiffness matrix solution.