High-rise modular buildings with innovative precast concrete shear walls as a lateral force resisting system

Abstract

Modular construction has been widely adopted for low-to-medium-rise buildings, but fairly limited for high-rises. A particular knowledge gap resides with the lateral force resistance of modular high-rises. Most such buildings adopt cast-in-situ cores for lateral force resisting, which is still labor-intensive. This paper aims to develop a new lateral force resisting system using precast shear walls as part of the modules for high-rises. A 40-story public housing building in Hong Kong was used for case study. A finite element (FE) model was developed to simulate the structural performance of the precast concrete shear walls and validated using results of cyclic loading tests. Using the FE model nonlinear static and dynamic analyses were conducted to examine the feasibility of the proposed system under the wind and seismic loadings in relevant codes. Multi-modal analysis further investigates the effects of higher modes on the seismic responses of the building. Results show that the developed FE model is effective to reproduce the structural performance of the precast concrete shear walls, and the proposed system is strong enough to resist wind and seismic loadings. Higher modes have considerable even dominant effects on seismic responses of the building. Using the cumulative contribution of modes to seismic demands is found appropriate to help select modes to calculate the seismic demands of high-rise modular buildings with the proposed lateral force resisting system.