• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제75권2호
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• pp.211-227
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• 2020

The contribution of infill wall is generally not considered in the structural analysis of reinforced concrete (RC) structures due to the lack of knowledge of the complex behavior of the infilled frame of RC structures. However, one of the significant factors affecting structural behavior and earthquake performance of RC structures is the infill wall. Considering structural and architectural features of RC structures, any infill wall may have openings with different amounts and aspect ratios. In the present study, the influence of infill walls with different opening rates on the structural behaviors and earthquake performance of existing RC structures were evaluated. Therefore, the change in the opening ratio in the infill wall has been investigated for monitoring the change in structural behavior and performance of the RC structures. The earthquake performance levels of existing RC structures with different structural properties were determined by detecting the damage levels of load-carrying components. The results of the analyzes indicate that the infill wall can completely change the distribution of column and beam damage level. It was observed that the openings in the walls had serious impact on the parameters affecting the behavior and earthquake performance of the RC structures. The infill walls have a beneficial effect on the earthquake performance of RC structures, provided they are placed regularly and there are appropriate openings rate throughout the RC structures and they do not cause structural irregularities.

• 한국전산구조공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국전산구조공학회 2008년도 정기 학술대회
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• pp.483-489
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• 2008

Masonry infill walls are frequently used as interior partitions and exterior walls in low- or middlerise RC buildings In the structural design and assessment of structural behaviors of buildings, the infill walls are usually treated as non-structural elements and they are ignored in analytical models. In this study, seismic behaviors of RC frame with/without masonry infill walls were investigated. To this end, the infill walls were modeled as equivalent diagonal struts. Based on analytical results, it has been shown that masonry infill walls can increase the global strength and stiffness of a structure. Accordingly, inter-story drift ratio will be decreased but seismic forces applied to the structure were increased than design seismic load because natural period of the structure was decreased. It is also seen from the analytical results that the inelastic deformation of RC frame with soft story is concentrated on the first story columns and thus, partial damage may have possibility of collapse of system.

• Computers and Concrete
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• 제25권4호
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• pp.327-341
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• 2020

Advanced forms of structural design (e.g., displacement-based methods) require knowledge of the non-linear force-displacement behavior of both the overall building and individual lateral load resisting elements, i.e., walls or building cores. Similarly, understanding the non-linear behaviour of the elements in a structure can also allow for a less conservative structural response to be calculated by better understanding the cracked (i.e., effective) properties of the various RC elements. Calculating the non-linear response of an RC section typically involves using 'black box' analysis packages, wherein the user may not be in complete control nor be aware of all the intricate settings and/or decisions behind the scenes. This paper introduces a user-friendly and transparent analysis program for predicting the back-bone force displacement behavior of slender (i.e., flexure controlled) RC walls, building cores or columns. The program has been validated and benchmarked theoretically against both commonly available and widely used analysis packages and experimentally against a database of 16 large-scale RC wall test specimens. The program, which is called WHAM, is written using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to promote transparency and allow users to further develop or modify to suit individual requirements. The program is available free-of-charge and is intended to be used as an educational tool for structural designers, researchers or students.

• Computers and Concrete
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• 제22권5호
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• pp.439-447
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• 2018

One of the important factors is the infill walls in the change of the structural rigidity, ductility, dynamic and static characteristics of the structures. The infill walls are not generally included in numerical analysis of reinforced concrete (RC) structural system due to lack of suitable theory and the difficulty of calculating the recommended models. In seismic regions worldwide, the residential structures are generally RC buildings with infill wall. Therefore, understanding the contribution of the infill walls to seismic performance of buildings may have a vital importance. This paper investigates the effects of infill walls on seismic performance of the existing RC residential buildings by considering requirements of the Turkish Earthquake Code (TEC). Seismic performance levels of residential RC buildings with and without walls in high-hazard zones were determined according to the nonlinear procedure given in the code. Pushover curves were obtained by considering the effect of masonry infill walls on seismic performance of RC buildings. The analysis results showed that the infill walls beneficially effected to the rigidity, roof displacements and seismic performance of the building.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제7권5호
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• pp.667-689
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• 2014

Structural walls (also known as shear walls) are one of the common lateral load resisting elements in reinforced concrete (RC) buildings in seismic regions. The performance of RC structural walls in recent earthquakes has exposed some problems with the existing design of RC structural walls. The main issues lie around the buckling of bars, out-of plane deformation of the wall (especially the zone deteriorated in compression), reinforcement getting snapped beneath a solitary thin crack etc. This study compares performance of a typical wall designed by different standards. For this purpose, a case study RC shear wall is taken from the Hotel Grand Chancellor in Christchurch which was designed according to the 1982 version of the New Zealand concrete structures standard (NZS3101:1982). The wall is redesigned in this study to comply with the detailing requirements of three standards; ACI-318-11, NZS3101:2006 and Eurocode 8 in such a way that they provide the same flexural and shear capacity. Based on section analysis and pushover analysis, nonlinear responses of the walls are compared in terms of their lateral load capacity and curvature as well as displacement ductilities, and the effect of the code limitations on nonlinear responses of the different walls are evaluated. A parametric study is also carried out to further investigate the effect of confinement length and axial load ratio on the lateral response of shear walls.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제16권1호
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• pp.119-127
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• 2019

When a structural wall is subjected to multi-directional ground motion, torsion-induced cracks degrade the stiffness of the wall. The effect of torsion should not be neglected. As a main lateral load resisting member, reinforced concrete (RC) structural wall has been widely studied under the combined action of bending and shear. Unfortunately, its seismic behavior under a combined action of torsion, bending and shear is rarely studied. In this study, torsional performances of the RC structural walls under the combined action is assessed from a comprehensive parametrical study. Finite element (FE) models are built and calibrated by comparing with the available experimental data. The study is then carried out to find out the critical design parameter affecting the torsional stiffness of RC structural walls, including the axial load ratio, aspect ratio, leg-thickness ratio, eccentricity of lateral force, longitudinal reinforcement ratio and transverse reinforcement ratio. Besides, to facilitate the application in practice, an empirical equation is developed to estimate the torsional stiffness of RC rectangular structural walls conveniently, which is found to agree well with the numerical results of the developed FE models.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제69권6호
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• pp.651-665
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• 2019

Past earthquakes have shown that appropriately designed and detailed buildings with shear walls have great performance such a way that a considerable portion of inelastic energy dissipation occurs in these structural elements. A plastic hinge is fundamentally an energy diminishing means which decrease seismic input energy through the inelastic deformation. Plastic hinge development in a RC shear wall in the areas which have plastic behavior depends on the ground motions characteristics as well as shear wall details. One of the most generally used forms of structural walls is flanged RC wall. Because of the flanges, these types of shear walls have large in-plane and out-of-plane stiffness and develop high shear stresses. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the main characteristics of these structural components and provide a more comprehensive expression of plastic hinge length in the application of performance-based seismic design method and promote the development of seismic design codes for shear walls. In this regard, the effects of axial load level, wall height, wall web and flange length, as well as various features of earthquakes, are examined numerically by finite element methods and the outcomes are compared with consistent experimental data. Based on the results, a new expression is developed which can be utilized to determine the length of plastic hinge area in the flanged RC shear walls.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제36권6호
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• pp.745-758
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• 2010

12 typical laminated composite reinforced concrete (RC) walls with different concrete ages and 3 cast-in-place RC walls subjected to low frequency cyclic load were carried out in this study. The failure mode, force-deformation response and energy dissipation capacity of these specimens were investigated. Differences of structural behaviours between composite RC walls and common cast-in-place RC walls were emphasized in the analysis. The compatibility of the composite specimens with different concrete ages was discussed based on the experiment. Test results indicated that the differences between the lateral bearing capacity and the displacement ductility of the composite walls and the common walls were not so obvious. Some of the composite specimen even has higher bearing capacity under the experiment loading situation. Besides, the two parts of the laminated composite specimens demonstrates incompatibility at the later loading sequence on failure mode and strain response when it is in tension. Finally, this laminated composite shear walls are suggested to be applied in rapid reconstruction structures which is not very high.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제78권3호
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• pp.269-280
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• 2021

Reinforced concrete (RC) structural walls with L-shaped sections are commonly used in RC buildings. The walls are often expected to sustain biaxial load and Unsymmetrical bending in an earthquake event. However, there currently exists limited experimental evidence regarding their seismic behaviour in these lateral loading directions. This paper makes experimental and numerical investigations to these walls behaviours. Experimental evidences are presented for four L-shaped wall specimens which were tested under simulated seismic load from different lateral directions. The results highlighted some distinct behaviour of L-shaped walls sustaining Unsymmetrical bending relating to their seismic performance. First, due to the Unsymmetrical bending, out-of-plane reaction forces occur for these walls, which contribute to accumulation of the out-of-plane deformations of the wall, especially when out-of-plane stiffness of the section is reduced by horizontal cracks in the cyclic load. Secondly, cracking was found to affect shear centre of the specimens loaded in the Unsymmetrical bending direction. The shear centre of these specimens distinctly differs in the flange in the positive and negative loading direction. Cracking of the flange also causes significant warping in the bottom part of the wall, which eventually lead to out-of-plane buckling failure.

• 한국전산구조공학회논문집
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• 제22권4호
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• pp.355-362
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• 2009

국내에 많이 건설되고 있는 빌라형 주택은 건축적인 요구를 위하여 저층부에 필로티를 두고 있는 경우가 많다. 구조물 상층부의 비내력벽에 의하여 저층에 연약층을 유발하고 따라서 지진에 매우 취약하다. 그러나 설계시 일반적인 설계방법과 동일하게 상부층의 칸막이벽은 비구조체로 간주되어 무시된다. 그러므로 설계단계에서 무시되는 비내력벽의 유무에 따라서 건축물이 어떠한 지진거동의 차이점을 보이는지 살펴볼 필요가 있다. 본 연구에서는 대상 건축물의 지진취약도 해석을 통하여 비내력벽의 유무에 따른 건축물의 지진거동을 평가하였다. 비내력벽의 유무에 따른 동일한 골조를 가지는 저층 철근콘크리트 건축물을 적용하여 지진거동에서 비내력벽의 영향을 평가하였다. 비내력벽은 보편화된 모형화 방법인 등가의 대각 압축 스트럿으로 고려하였다. 골조만 있는 모델과 연약층이 있는 모델의 취약도곡선을 비교하였다. 해석 결과로 연약층이 있는 RC 건물의 내진성능은 설계기준에서 제시하고 있는 성능수준을 만족하지 못하며 지진에 취약함을 보여준다.