A versatile finite strip model for three‐dimensional tall building analysis

This study endeavors to show the inadequacy of thin beam eigenfunctions commonly used to represent displacement profiles of tall buildings in the finite strip analysis. Particularly, the model fails to reflect the correct building behaviour whenever the storey‐shear distortion may be significant. An attempt is made, therefore, to develop a new set of strip shape functions that is free of the above shortcoming. A polynomial series is specially constructed and shown to be effective for all building types. Several tall building examples are tested and the results clearly exhibit the versatility and surprisingly high accuracy of the proposed finite strip model, in both static and free vibration analyses.