The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

Earthquake response of torsionally-coupled buildings

Hejal, Reem; Chopra, Anil K.

UCB/EERC-87/20, Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, 1987-12, 334 pages (555.3/H39/1988)

An investigation is made of the coupled lateral-torsional response of buildings with unsymmetric plan when subjected to earthquakes. The investigation is organized in three parts: (1) a study of the elastic response of torsionally coupled, one-story framed buildings to earthquake ground motion, characterized by response spectra of three different shapes; (2) the development and application of an effective procedure for estimating the maximum response of a class of torsionally coupled, multistory buildings to earthquake ground motion, characterized by smooth response spectra; and (3) the definition of centers of rigidity, centers of twist, shear centers, and static eccentricities and the development of procedures for determining their locations for one-story and multistory buildings of general plan layouts.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/EERC/EERC-87-20.pdf (18 MB)