Low-rise rigidly framed structures, with height to length (width) ≤5, such as small office buildings, apartment complexes, and parking garages are some of the most widely built structures in the world. Determining the magnitude of the lateral deflection of the building frame of these structures, due to external loads, is needed to meet appropriate serviceability and design code requirements. Classic methods of determining the deflection of a lowrise rigidly framed structure can be challenging and (or) time consuming; especially when the building frame has many members. Therefore, the lateral deflection of such structures is typically obtained using the finite element method (FEM), which requires tedious data entry and can be subject to human error.
The availability of a simple method that can be used to determine the lateral deflections of rigidly framed structures would simplify the design process and provide an efficient means to verify computer aided calculations. In this paper, a simplified rational closed form analytical expression is formulated for calculating the lateral deflection of low-rise rigidly framed structures subjected to different lateral force distributions varying with the height of the frame, as shown in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1. Pressure distributions used in this study (a) hydrostatic (earth pressure), (b) triangular (wind), (c) uniform, and (d) semi-elliptical.
Primary references
Iskander, M., A. Dimond, W. Aboumoussa, and F. Masood (2012). Approximate deflection of rigidly framed earth retaining structures due to an unknown earth pressure distribution. International Journal for Numerical and Analytical Methods in Geomechanics, Vol. 36, pp. 517–532, doi: 10.1002/nag.1025, Wiley [link]
Iskander, M., F. Masood, S. Parikh, A. Dimond, and W. Aboumoussa (2012) “Closed-form expressions for lateral deflection of low-rise rigidly-framed concrete structures,” Canadian J. of Civil Engineering, Vol. 39, No. 1, pp. 20-33, doi 10.1139/l11-104, NRC Research Press
