The Influence of Non-Structural Components on the Serviceability Performance of High-Rise Buildings

Abstract In the last decade there has been an enormous increase in the number of high-rise buildings constructed worldwide. Current Australian high-rise building design practice is to assume that the structural skeleton of a building provides resistance to any lateral forces that might occur. The overall design of high-rise buildings is usually dominated by serviceability limit state considerations rather than the ultimate limit state factors. This study demonstrates the influence of non-structural components (NSCs) (for example, partitions, doors, windows, and fagades, etc.) on the lateral stiffness of high-rise buildings, with an emphasis on checks of the design at the serviceability limit state. This paper provides an overview of the design philosophy of high-rise buildings, details of a case-study project, and the results from a detailed parametric study of the case study structure, using a finite element model to identify the influence of the NSCs on the lateral stiffness. Parameters representing NSCs were varied in turn to replicate the reasonable variation that might be found in current Australian practice. Based on the analyses, the influence of NSCs on the lateral stiffness, for example storey drift, was seen to be significant. From a modal analysis, it was observed that there are no significant contributions from the NSCs to the natural frequency of the high-rise building if the NSCs were installed only along the loading direction. However, the second and third modes of the high-rise building increased due to the inclusion of the NSCs. If these components were included in the direction that is orthogonal to the loading direction, obvious changes of the fundamental frequency could be realised by the infill walls.