Stiffened, Coupled Shear Walls

Based on the continuum approach, a general analysis is presented for a pair of laterally loaded, coupled shear walls, supported on either rigid or flexible foundations, with one or two stiffening beams at arbitrary positions on the height. Closed solutions are given for the three common load cases; a uniformly distributed load, a triangularly distributed load, and a point load at the top, simulating both wind and earthquake actions. Numerical examples show that structural performance can be improved considerably by the addition of two stiffening beams, the greatest benefits being achieved when the beams are located at roughly one‐third and two‐thirds of the height, when the structure is supported on rigid foundations. The corresponding optimum position for a single stiffening beam is between 0.4 and 0.5 of the height of the structure. The optimum beam positions occur at lower levels if the structure is supported on flexible foundations.