The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

Analytical models for predicting the lateral response of R C shear walls: evaluation of their reliability

Vulcano, Alfonso; Bertero, Vitelmo V.

UCB/EERC-87/19, Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, 1987-11, 99 pages (530/V84/1987)

A wall model recently proposed by Japanese researchers is examined. This model, based on a macroscopic approach, idealizes the generic wall member as three vertical line elements with infinitely rigid beams at the top and bottom floor levels. The two outside elements are truss elements representing the axial stiffness of the boundary columns; the central element is a one-component model constituted by horizontal, vertical, and rotational springs to represent, respectively, the shear stiffness of the wall, the vertical axial stiffness, and the flexural stiffness of the central panel. Modifications of this wall model are developed to improve the simulation of the hysteretic behavior of the axial elements adopted by the Japanese. These axial elements are replaced by new elements which simulate more closely the hysteretic behavior of a reinforced concrete column under axial load reversals. The effectiveness and reliability of the modified model are examined in a numerical investigation in which results are calibrated against measured behavior of a series of reinforced concrete structural walls tested at the Univ. of California at Berkeley.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/EERC/EERC-87-19.pdf (3 MB)