Review of Performance-Based Design of RC Shear Walls

Reinforced concrete shear walls are generally used as predominant in-plane lateral force-resisting members in tall buildings. National Building Code of India has clauses guiding their design process as well as there are numerous research papers detailing empirical formulations that can be used for complicated designs. Many structural design related software packages come with comprehensive shear wall modelling, analysis and designing modules. But in performance-based design philosophy it is necessary to consider not only the strength and the stiffness aspects of a shear wall but also its performance and its ultimate failure mode when subjected to strong dynamic loads. Especially RC shear walls present more challenges when it comes to accurate modelling and design because of the heterogeneous nature of concrete, variable concrete-aggregate and concrete-rebar bonding, strength degradation or pinched hysteretic behaviour, etc. This paper presents a summary of literature available of performance-based design methodologies and their applicability to the design of reinforced concrete shear walls.