ON THE ACCURACY OF THE CONTINUUM METHOD FOR ANALYSIS OF COUPLED SHEARWALLS OF UNEQUAL WIDTH

The continuous medium technique has been widely used in the preliminar y analysis and design of coupled shear walls in tall buildings by prac tising engineers for many years. One of the basic assumptions made whe n using this approximate method is that the coupling beams deform with points of contraflexure at mid-span. However, when there is a non-neg ligible difference between the stiffness's of the structural walls con nected by the coupling beams, the points of contraflexure of the beams can move off-centre, and hence noticeable error in the analysis may o ccur. This paper presents a study on the accuracy of the continuous me dium technique for the preliminary analysis of concrete coupled struct ural walls with unequal width. Comparison of the analytical results be tween the method and the wide-column analogy has been made. Recommenda tions for using the continuum method to analyse coupled shear walls ar e presented.