Thermal Loads Effect on Response of One Story Reinforced Concrete Frame Buildings in UAE

In this paper the effect of temperature change (thermal load) on one-story reinforced concrete frame buildings allocated in the UAE is studied. Sixty eight finite element models with different story heights and slab lengths were developed in ETABS to carry out this study. The effect of temperature change with the variation of story height, slab length and support condition on the lateral displacement and horizontal reactions was studied in this paper. The thermal load results for the fixed support models showed that for different buildings with the same column heights, the external columns' displacements and reactions increased considerably with increasing the slab length. Comparing the horizontal reaction results due to thermal loads- of the two modeled building heights (3 m and 6 m) showed that the 6 m models have lower reactions at external columns but larger top displacements. The comparison between the lateral load results for fixed and hinged support conditions showed that models with fixed support conditions had lower lateral displacement but higher horizontal reactions due to thermal loads. The effect of the support condition on the lateral displacement was larger for longer slab lengths whereas its effect on the horizontal reaction was larger for smaller slab lengths. The support conditions showed to have larger effect on the shorter column models.