Plane shape impact to non-bearing masonry walls in a high rise reinforced concrete walls building

Abstract

Nowadays, due to architectural necessities, structures have emerged in many different plane shapes, such as U, V, L T and others. It is important to establish if a nonrectangular shape causes important changes both for the bearing and non-bearing elements, compared to a rectangular one. The paper shows the impact a buildings shapes on the partitioning walls. For this paper the structures in study are two high rise reinforced concrete walls buildings placed in a high seismic area (Bucharest, Romania). The partitioning walls are made of masonry. Both bearing and non-bearing walls are the same for both buildings. They are just placed in different locations, so that the structures have different shapes in plan. One has the shape of an I and the other of a V. The paper studies the buildings behavior in both cases. The masonry walls stresses are analysed for both the elastic and plastic stage. The conclusion is that in this case, for these shapes, the non-bearing walls are not affected very much by the building’s plane shape.