ABSTRACT
The bracing system of a multi-storey building is normally made up from different units: frameworks, shear walls, coupled shear walls and cores. They all contribute to the overall resistance of the system, but their contributions can be very different both in weight and in nature, so it is essential for the designer to know their behaviour in order that optimum bracing system can be produced. Frameworks play a very important role in the structural analysis as they have all the three basic stiffness characteristics, i.e., they have local bending stiffness, global bending stiffness and shear stiffness. Their importance is underlined by the fact that the analysis of whole structures (consisting of frameworks, shear walls, coupled shear walls and cores) can often be traced back to the investigation of a single framework and its equivalent column. It is therefore advantageous to start the investigation with the analysis of frameworks.
