ABSTRACT
The stability of a building can, and should, be assessed by looking at the stability of its individual elements as well as examining its stability as a whole. The method can also be used when the building is subjected to a concentrated force on top of the building—e.g. a swimming pool on the top floor. The model which is used for the pure torsional buckling analysis of the building is an equivalent cantilever of thin-walled, open cross-section which has effective Saint-Venant stiffness and warping stiffness. In certain cases, concentrated load on top of the building may need to be taken into account. A panorama restaurant, a swimming pool or a water tank may represent some extra load that cannot be covered by the uniformly distributed floor load, considered to be the same at each floor level over the height of the building.
