A regularized fiber element model for reinforced concrete shear walls
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Date
2016
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Abstract
Reinforced concrete shear walls are used because they provide high lateral stiffness and
resistance to extreme seismic loads. However, with the increase in building height, these
walls have become slenderer and hence responsible of carrying larger axial and shear loads.
Because 2D/3D finite element inelastic models for walls are still complex and computationally
demanding, simplified but accurate and efficient fiber element models are necessary to
quickly assess the expected seismic performance of these buildings. A classic fiber element
model is modified herein to produce objective results under particular loading conditions of the
walls, that is, high axial loads, low axial loads, and nearly constant bending moment. To make
it more widely applicable, a shear model based on the modified compression field theory was
added to this fiber element. Consequently, this paper shows the formulation of the proposed
element and its validation with different experimental results of cyclic tests reported in the
literature. It was found that in order to get objective responses in the element, the
regularization techniques based on fracture energy had to be modified, and nonlinearities
because of buckling and fracture of steel bars, concrete crushing, and strain penetration
effects were needed to replicate the experimental cyclic behavior. Thus, even under the
assumption of plane sections, which makes the element simple and computationally efficient,
the proposed element was able to reproduce the experimental data, and therefore, it can be
used to estimate the seismic performance of walls in reinforced concrete buildings