Three-dimensional analysis of asymmetric shear wall structures with connecting and stiffening beams

The paper presents the static analysis of non-planar asymmetric shear wall structures with connecting and stiffening beams. The stiff beams incorporated at the various levels of coupled shear walls improve the stiffness of the structural system of tall buildings. The analysis is based on a variant of the continuous connection method for three-dimensional shear wall structures having stepwise changes in cross-section. In the continuous approach the connecting beams are replaced by equivalent continuous connections. The shear walls are considered as thin-walled beams of open section. The differential equation systems for shear wall structure segments of the constant cross-section are uncoupled by orthogonal eigenvectors. The results obtained by the presented method have been compared with those obtained experimentally and analytically, given in literature, and a good match has been observed. The proposed method is efficient and can be very useful, particularly, at the preliminary design stage. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.