Enhancement of Seismic Behaviour of Slender Flanged RC Structural Wall Using Extended Boundary Element at Web Tip

RC structural walls have been extensively used for decades in medium to high-rise buildings in regions susceptible to earthquakes as incorporating RC structural walls enhances the seismic performance of moment-resisting frames at the global level. Due to the requirement of functionality and aesthetic reasons, very often in buildings rectangular RC structural wall segments are combined to form an unsymmetrical flanged structural wall that has significantly different behaviour compared to rectangular structural walls. From previous studies, it was observed that for web parallel flange-in-tension bending mode, T-shaped flanged RC structural walls exhibit lower ultimate drift and smaller displacement ductility. In the present study one T-shaped RC structural wall (T1) is designed and detailed as per the conventional methodology and for the other T-shaped RC structural wall (T2), the horizontal extent of the boundary element is extended at the web tip. Results of the analyses reveal that T2 configuration shows a relatively higher ultimate drift capacity for web parallel flange-in-tension bending mode as compared to T1. In the case of the ultimate drift, for web parallel flange-in-compression bending mode both configurations exhibit comparable levels of ultimate drift capacity. It is also observed from the results that the T2 configuration has higher displacement ductility capacity compared to the T1 configuration for web parallel flange-in-tension bending mode. For web parallel flange-in-compression bending mode both T1 and T2 configuration exhibit comparable ductility capacity.