Numerical Study on Lateral Deflection and Flexural Capacity of RC Shear Wall With and Without Enlarged Boundary Element

Reinforced Concrete (RC) special shear wall is widely used in the lateral load resisting system of multistoried buildings due to its large in-plane lateral strength and lateral stiffness. In the present study, the influence of enlarged boundary elements on the possible seismic behaviour of such shear wall is studied. Detailed finite element modelling of a slender RC shear wall is carried out with enlarged boundary elements. 8-noded solid elements and 2-noded truss elements are used for modelling the concrete and the reinforcement parts, respectively. Material nonlinearity is considered by assigning damaged plasticity model properties to concrete and bilinear strain-hardening constitutive model to reinforcement, respectively. For obtaining the effectiveness of the enlarged boundary elements, another shear wall with rectangular cross-section is modelled considering the total plan area to be the same for both the wall sections. Nonlinear static analysis is carried out for both the models under varying axial compression. Based on the lateral load-deformation response, strain distribution profiles and damage characteristics, the wall section with enlarged boundary elements is observed to have better peak flexural capacity and the lateral drift level at the instant of peak flexural capacity as compared to the rectangular wall.