Efficient Dynamic Analysis of High-rise Buildings Having Belt Walls Connected by a Sky-Bridge

In the design of a sky-bridge, repetitive boundary nonlinear time history analyses are required to accurately predict dynamic behaviors of the connected buildings because the connection systems of a sky-bridge usually have high nonlinearity. If a conventional finite element model for entire high-rise buildings is used for repetitive boundary nonlinear time history analyses, computational efforts could be significant. In this study, an equivalent cantilever model considering the belt-wall effect has been proposed for an efficient dynamic analysis and a performance evaluation of vibration control of high-rise buildings connected by a sky-bridge. To verify the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed equivalent model, boundary nonlinear time history analyses of 49- and 42-story example buildings connected by a sky-bridge have been performed for wind excitation. Based on the analytical results, it has been verified that the proposed equivalent model can provide accurate dynamic responses of building structures connected by a sky-bridge with significantly reduced computational efforts.