A global approach for three‐dimensional analysis of tall buildings

In the literature, several approximate approaches have been proposed to analyse the lateral loading distribution of external loads in high‐rise buildings; in this paper, a general method is proposed for the analysis of the lateral loading distribution of three‐dimensional structures composed of any kind of bracings (frames, framed walls, shear walls, closed and/or open thin‐walled cores and tubes) under the customary assumption of floor slabs being undeformable in their planes. This general formulation allows analyses of high‐rise structures by taking into account the torsional rigidity of the elements composing the building without gross simplifications, even in the case of very complex shapes and with the contemporary presence of different kinds of bracing. The method is aimed at gaining an insight into the force flow in the structure, in order to understand how the building response is governed by decisive structural parameters and to compare preliminary calculations with other approaches such as the structural finite element analysis. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.