Influence of Openings on the Structural Response of Shear Wall

Abstract

Shear walls have been conferred as a major lateral load resisting element in a building in any seismic prone zone. It is essential to determine behavior of shear wall in the preelastic and postelastic stage. Shear walls may be provided with openings due to functional requirement of the building. The size and location of opening may play a significant role in the response of shear walls. Though it is a well known fact that size of openings affects the structural response of shear walls significantly, there is no clear consensus on the behavior of shear walls under different opening locations. The present study aims to study the dynamic behavior of shear walls under various opening locations using nonlinear finite element analysis using degenerated shell element with assumed strain approach. Only material nonlinearity has been considered using plasticity approach. A five-parameter Willam-Warnke failure criterion is considered to define the yielding/crushing of the concrete with tensile cutoff. The time history responses have been plotted for all opening cases with and without ductile detailing. The analysis has been done for different damping ratios. It has been observed that the large number of small openings resulted in better displacement response.