Frame-Wall Systems with Rigidly Jointed Link Beams

A new continuum model for the lateral load analysis of frame-wall systems with rigidly jointed link beams is presented. It consists of a vertical shear element with infinite flexural rigidity and a restraint-free wall having infinite shearing rigidity. The stiffness of the rotational restraints provided by the link beams to the wall is included in the rigidity of the shear beam. The validity of the proposed model is demonstrated with an example of a 15-story system. The present results are in excellent agreement with those obtained by analyzing the structure as a frame, in which the wall is treated as a wide column and the members are taken as inextensible. For the same structure the top deflection found by employing the conventional model was found to be more than three times the correct value, where the conventional model is one in which the link beams are assumed to provide rotational restraints equal to 12 times their flexural stiffness only to the adjacent column.