A method for determination of the dimensions of seismic shear walls in buildings

A lateral load carrying system consisting of only shear walls is used generally for structures having 14 storeys or more. It can be seen that the effect of earthquakes in the systems consisting of the shear walls or shear walls-core are very small. For resisting earthquake effects it is proposed to construct shear walls which are perpendicular to each other in plan and having the cross sectional area 1.5% of the building. Unfortunately in this proposal, the effect of number of storeys and the division of shear wall area to the necessary parts is not taken into consideration. In this paper, these factors are considered as, number of storeys, plan area of a storey, earthquake risk zone, material properties and shear wall thickness. The criteria for determination of the dimensions of earthquake shear walls which are suitable for architectural considerations of the building are given. For various storey areas and 10 storeys, the lengths of shear walls which ensure the suggested criteria, having the same length are given in diagrams. It is also shown how to find the length of shear walls under the same conditions if there are more than 10 storeys.