Stiffened Coupled Shear Walls on Elastic Foundations with Flexible Connections and Stepwise Changes in Width

Authors: H. MURAT ARSLAN, ORHAN AKSOGAN, S. SEREN AKAVCI

Abstract: The exceedingly large top drift and bottom bending moment due to the weakening of shear walls in tall buildings by door, window and corridor openings is one of the most frequently encountered problems of structural engineering. The best way of tackling this problem is to employ stiffening beams. Authors who tried to find closed form solutions could handle only cases with up to two stiffening beams (Coull, 1974; Coull, 1991; Choo and Coull, 1984; Coull and Puri, 1968; Chan and Kuang, 1988; Chan and Kuang, 1989). Recently, a computer program which can find analytical expressions for the design of coupled shear walls with many stiffening beams has been prepared, making use of the MATHEMATICA computer algebra systems (Aksogan et al., 1993; Arslan and Aksogan, 1995). With the approach used in the latter studies, the possibility of optimisation with respect to different parameters has emerged. In all the works that are mentioned, except Arslan and Aksogan (1995), all properties of the shear walls and the connecting beams have to be kept constant along the height of the building. In the present work, employing the method used in Aksogan et al. (1993) and Arslan and Aksogan (1995), MATHEMATICA and FORTRAN computer programs have been prepared for the general treatment of any number of stiffening beams in a coupled shear wall with flexible connections and foundations, having occasional changes in the properties of the shear walls and the connecting beams. A perfect agreement has been observed between the results of the present study and those of the SAP90 Structural Analysis Program in the examples used for the verification of the present method.

Keywords: Coupled shear wall, Elastic foundation, Stiffener, flexible connection, Continuous connection method.

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