Tall building structures unified plane panels behaviour

In this paper, it is shown that every plane panel, used to brace tall build ing structures, can be easily and generally approached through the use of t he continuous medium technique. As is well known, the number of parameters needed to define any panel is very small, both in relation to its stiffness or behaviour characteristics, when acted upon by lateral wind forces. Init ially, by deriving the governing differential equations of the panel behavi our, the equivalence is shown of the formal mathematical description, and h ence of the structural behaviour, between a pair of shear walls associated by lintel beams and the plane association, by pinned horizontal bars, of on e shear wall and one frame. In both cases, axial deformations due to axial forces on vertical members are taken into account. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.