Core Wall Design Spreadsheets to Eurocode 2
Core-walls have been the most popular seismic force resisting system in western Canada for many decades, and recently have become popular on the west coast of the US for high-rise buildings up to 600 ft (180 m) high. Without the moment frames that have traditionally been used in high-rise concrete construction in the US, the system offers the advantages of lower cost and more flexible architecture.
In the US, such buildings are currently being designed using nonlinear response history analysis (NLRHA) at the Maximum Considered Earthquake (MCE) level of ground motion. In Canada, these buildings are designed using only linear dynamic (response spectrum) analysis at the MCE hazard level combined with various prescriptive design procedures.
This paper presents the background to some of the prescriptive design procedures that have recently been developed to permit the safe design of high-rise core-wall buildings using only the results of response spectrum analysis (RSA).
The series of European standards commonly known as “Eurocodes”, EN 1992 (Eurocode 2, in the following also listed as EC2) deals with the design of reinforced concrete structures – buildings, bridges and other civil engineering works. EC2 allows the calculation of action effects and of resistances of concrete structures submitted to specific actions and contains all the prescriptions and good practices for properly detailing the reinforcement.
In this spreadsheet , the principles of Eurocode 2, part 1-1 are applied to the design of core wall.