In multi-storey structural wall buildings, the structural walls are required to resist additional shear force due to their interactions with the floors and gravity-resisting system, which is not fully catered for in current seismic design provisions and assessment guidelines. This paper scrutinizes the mechanics of the interaction between structural reinforced concrete (RC) structural walls, floors and gravity frames in multi-storey RC structural wall buildings during elastic and nonlinear response phases. It also investigates the implications of this interaction on design of multi-story RC wall buildings. Generic expressions are derived to predict the drift and rotation profiles of multi-storey RC wall buildings. Then, a simple hand calculation method is developed to estimate the system (moment) overstrength of multi-storey RC wall buildings due to system (wall-floor-frames) interaction. The proposed method is applied to a prototype building with different slab dimensions and stiffness, and verified by comparing with the system overstrength factor obtained using finite element analysis. The simplified method estimates, and the nonlinear finite element analyses results agree, that a system overstrength factor of 1.7 can be used to account for the 3D interaction between the structural walls, floors and gravity frames in design and assessment of typical ductile RC wall buildings.

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