Conceptual Design of Tall and Unconventionally Shaped Structures: A Handy Analytical Method

Nowadays high-rise buildings are a worldwide architectural phenomenon. In the last decades, next to economics, municipal regulations and politics, aesthetics has got a leading role in planning and design of these structures, giving rise to bizarre shapes, from diagrid systems to twisted, tapered and tilted ones. In their structural design, the choice of an appropriate model able to thoroughly identify the key parameters governing the response of the structure as well as the force flow acting within the stiffening members is all along a crucial factor. In this paper a three-dimensional formulation is proposed to evaluate the lateral load distribution of external actions in tall buildings, in which the geometry of the stiffeners can vary along the height. This method takes into account any combination of bracings, including elements with open thin-walled cross-section, which are analysed in the framework of Timoshenko-Vlasov's theory of sectorial areas. In order to evaluate the effectiveness and the suppleness of the formulation, comparisons with other approaches derived from the literature and numerical examples regarding new architectural trends are carried out.

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