Drift control of high-rise buildings with unit load method

The use of displacement participation factors obtained by the unit load method provides an effective drift control tool for high-rise buildings. Structural sensitivity coefficients and displacement participation factors for members in a structure with respect to the lateral displacement to be controlled are computed and used for identifying active members and their corresponding displacement components. The drift control method using the displacement participation factors with a variable linking strategy is formulated into an optimization problem to determine the amount of material to be modified. Using the drift control method, a structural design model for a high-rise building is proposed and applied to one verifying example and two moment resisting frames. Time consuming trial-and-error processes related to the structural design of a high-rise building is avoided by the proposed structural design model. As demonstrated in the examples, the maximum lateral displacements of the examples are reduced by 57·05, 40·0 and 16·36% without changing the total weights of the structures.