a.s moghadam - Graduate student, Department of Civil Engineering, McMaster Universily, Hamilton, Ontario, L۸S ۴L۷, Canada
w.k tso - Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, L۸S ۴L۷, Canada

A study is carried out to show the damage potential caused by torsion in eccentric multistorey buildings. Two ۷-storey RC ductile moment resisting frame buildings, one symmetrić and the other asymmetric are designed based on Canadian codes. Nonlinear ۳D static pushover analyses are performed to these structures and a comparison is made on displacements, interstorey drift ratio, ductility and hinge pattern of the edge frames to show the changes in their behaviour due to torsion. Also a ۲-D pushover analysis is done on a frame of the asymmetric building to examine the limitations of this simplified approach. A load distribution that is resulted from elastic ۳-D analysis is assumed for this frame. It is shown that at higher levels of lateral load the ۲-D pushover can not simulate the behaviour of the frame.