A general simplified method for static and free vibration analysis of coupled shear walls of a bay

In recent years, coupled shear walls have been used more often because they provide a significant percentage of the total stiffness of a tall building total horizontal bracing system. This article presents an analytical procedure for the static and dynamic analysis of coupled shear walls of a bay using a continuous model type - CTB of three fields. The coupled shear wall is modeled as a continuous structure consisting of the parallel coupling of a Timoshenko extensible beam and a shear beam. Using a variational approach, the equilibrium equations, constitutive laws, and boundary conditions are derived by applying Hamilton's principle to the relevant Lagrangian function. Closed-form solutions are provided for the static deflection of the coupled shear wall under general profile lateral loads and the periods of vibration of the coupled shear wall under vertical loads uniformly distributed along its height. A validation of the static analysis was carried out, and to find the range of validity of the continuous model and proposed solution methods, a parametric analysis was carried out. The results are encouraging and show that the proposed analytical solutions have excellent correspondence with respect to the finite element method; they are accurate, reliable and involve low computational cost at a preliminary stage, and can be used as a verification method at the final stage of structural analysis and design.