3‐D Characteristics of RC Wall Response

Abstract

There is a lack of established guidelines for the seismic design of reinforced concrete (RC) walls with nonplanar shapes such as L and T. Inelastic responses of such walls may be governed by biaxial flexure irrespective of the building geometry. A related problem is evaluating the seismic vulnerability of irregular frame‐wall construction. Walls may be subjected to bilateral postyield deformations in such buildings. The paper introduces a microcomputer program to practically study 3‐D characteristics of RC wall response by utilizing hypoelastic fiber modeling. The program is first verified by correlating simulated and reported experimental responses of RC columns subjected to biaxial flexure. Subsequently, a sensitivity study considering three analytical test specimens of different shapes and flexural reinforcement amount is carried out. Major direction response of barbell walls is not influenced by bilateral displacements unless the displacement along the weak direction is significantly larger than displacement along the strong direction. However, response characteristics of an L‐shaped wall may change significantly along different directions of a bilateral displacement path. The effective flexural reinforcement of such walls as they respond along certain bilateral displacement paths may lead to undesirable failure characteristics.