Optimum structural modelling for tall buildings

Abstract

It is a common practice to model multi-storey tall buildings as frame structures where the loads for structural design are supported by beams and columns. Intrinsically, the structural strength provided by the walls and slabs are neglected. As the building height increases, the effect of lateral loads on multi-storey structures increases considerably. The consideration of walls and slabs in addition to the frame structure modelling shall theoretically lead to improved lateral stiffness. Thus, a more economic structural design of multi-storey buildings can be achieved. In this research, modelling and structural analysis of a 61-storey building have been performed to investigate the effect of considering the walls, slabs and wall openings in addition to frame structure modelling. Sophisticated finite element approach has been adopted to configure the models, and various analyses have been performed. Parameters, such as maximum roof displacement and natural frequencies, are chosen to evaluate the structural performance. It has been observed that the consideration of slabs alone with the frame modelling may have negligible improvement on structural performance. However, when the slabs are combined with walls in addition to frame modelling, significant improvement in structural performance can be achieved.

Non-linear FEM analysis of seismic induced pounding between neighbouring multi-storey structures

“…The earthquake that struck Mexico City in 1985 has revealed the fact that pounding was present in more than 40% of 330 collapsed or severely damaged structures [1]. Furthermore, even in those cases where it does not result in significant structural damage, pounding always induces higher floor acceleration in the form of large magnitude short duration pulses, which in turn cause greater damage to building contents [2][3][4][5].…”

A mixed isostatic 16 dof quadrilateral membrane element with drilling rotations, based on Airy stresses

“…17. Similar tests have been analyzed in many papers (see [32,35,36]). The analysis was performed with different meshes and repeated, for comparison, using the Abaqus S8R element and the results are shown in Table 14 and Fig.…”

“…The element shows satisfactory accuracy for very coarse meshes and overall rate of convergence h 2 for stress and displacements. Different contexts were considered including problems with stress concentration and wall structures [35,36]. Several comparisons with other membrane elements available in the literature were also reported and discussed.…”

Parallel Framework for Earthquake Induced Response Computation of the Sdof Structure

“…Structural responses substantially vary with the occurrence of ground excitation induced from severe earthquake Jameel et al 2012b). Therefore, the computation of seismic responses of structures is of utmost important (Islam et al 2013;Lin et al 2011).…”