Seismic performance of high-rise dual modular wall-frame systems

•A modular hinged wall with BRBs (MHWBB) is proposed to strengthen MRFs to achieve uniformly distributed MRF inter-story drift.•A design process using preset structural member stiffness ratios and modal response spectrum analysis is proposed.•Nonlinear time history analyses were performed to investigate seismic performance of the dual system with the MHWBB and MRF.•The influences from the number of HW segments with/without BRBs are investigated. Hinged walls (HWs) were frequently used to control lateral deformation profiles of moment-resisting frames (MRFs) under earthquakes. In high-rise hinged wall-frame systems, the seismic moment demand and required stiffness of the walls are too large that it is difficult for the walls to stay in elastic range and making the MRF deform uniformly under major earthquakes. To reduce the seismic moment demands applied on the wall, this paper proposed a modular hinged wall with buckling-restrained braces to strengthen MRFs and convert the MRFs to a dual system (MHWBBF). The modular hinged walls are composed of different number of modular HW segments with/without buckling-restrained braces (BRBs) and used to form various study cases. Nonlinear time history analyses using 10 ground motions considering two intensity levels were performed for the purpose of investigating the seismic performance of different study cases. The results indicate that the proposed MHWBBF works as expected, which is mainly because: (1) the usage of modular HW segments can significantly reduce the seismic force demands on the walls; (2) the usage of BRBs can effectively reduce the structural displacement responses and inter-story drift differences among different HW segments.