CONTRIBUTION OF FLOOR SLABS TO LATERAL RIGIDITY OF TALL BUILDINGS

Abstract

Buildings are usually analysed as 2D or 3D frames ignoring the contribution of floor slab to the lateral resistance of buildings. In this dissertation two building models are analysed using 3D rectangular beam model, 3D T-beam model and full finite element analysis including the floor slab. The lateral displacements of all the models are compared. The results indicate that by using the rectangular beams without considering the slabs, the lateral deflection of the structure is considerably overestimated. A simplified method is proposed to incorporate the slab contribution. This proposed model compares reasonably well with the model using finite element analysis.