Seismic Response of Shear Wall–Floor Slab Assemblage

Reinforced Concrete (RC) structural walls are commonly used in tall RC frame–wall buildings in severe seismic zones for enhancing lateral strength and stiffness of the buildings. Conventionally, the structural walls in multi-storeyed buildings are designed in the same way as isolated shear walls. However, due to the presence of floor slabs at different levels, there is an increase of stiffness locally at each slab–wall junction, which may lead to a significantly different response of the assemblage as compared to the isolated shear wall. Also, the floor slabs tend to partition the slender wall into a number of smaller panels between successive floor slabs. The present study aims to investigate the seismic behaviour of such multi-storeyed slab–wall assemblage using non-linear time history analyses of three different models under ground motions recorded during a past earthquake.