by Adel Awad, Hwaija Bassam, Isreb Talal

These buildings are found in the main cities of Syria and represent modern construction practice followed in the last 50 years. The floor system is a two-way reinforced concrete slab, which spans between orthogonal sets of beams that transfer the load to the columns. The frames are designed to carry gravity loads only

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by Adel Awad, Hwaija Bassam, Isreb Talal

These buildings are characterized by a combination of shear walls and frames in both directions. The buildings are multiple housing units found in the main cities of Syria. The shear walls are often part of the elevator and service cores, whereas the frames are arranged in-plane, in conjunction with the walls, to support the floor system. Stiffness and mass distribution are irregular and the majority of buildings may experience soft-story or torsional problems. As a result, these buildings are expected to have only moderate seismic resistance.

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