A procedure for creep and shrinkage analysis of frames with low beam stiffness

Adjacent vertical members in tall buildings undergo differential time‐dependent deformations due to creep and shrinkage. These deformations result in differential deflections at floor levels and redistribution of forces. An available practical procedure in the literature to estimate these deformations, taking into account the sequential nature of the loading, utilizes the rate of creep method (RCM) to evaluate the stress transfer between concrete and steel. This procedure is designated as Procedure(RCM) and is prone to errors since the creep recovery of concrete is neglected in RCM. A more accurate procedure designated as Procedure(AEMM) using the age‐adjusted effective modulus method (AEMM) as a stress transfer method, and taking into account the sequential nature of the loading, is proposed. The proposed procedure is more accurate than Procedure(RCM) since creep recovery of concrete is considered in AEMM. Numerical studies are carried out in this paper to compare the results from these two procedures. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.