Effect Of Shape Of Shear Wall On Performance Of Mid-Rise Buildings Under Seismic Loading

Abstract

In multi-storey reinforced concrete (RC) buildings, one of most common practices to increase their lateral stiffness against earthquakes is to introduce shear walls at the critical location of the RC building. Various shapes including (e.g. Rectangular, T-Shape, L-Shape, C-Shape) are most commonly adopted for shear walls. The present study is to investigate the effectiveness of the shear walls regarding efficiency and economy to provide lateral stiffness to multi-storey buildings in a better way and hence resist seismic loads. In this study, different shapes of shear walls are selected for comparison i.e. Rectangular, C-Shape, L-Shape, T-Shape etc. A typical twenty (20) storey RC building with regular plan is selected for analysis purpose. The building is first modeled and analyzed by introducing columns only. No shear wall is provided in the first model which will be used as reference. Then all shapes of shear walls, selected for comparison, are introduced one by one in each separate models and analyzed. The results for various analysis outputs i.e. storey drifts, storey displacements, and storey shears are obtained, plotted and compared. It is seen that Rectangular and L-Shaped walls are most effective in resisting seismic forces while H & T-Shaped walls show the least resistance towards earthquake impacts.