Hysteretic Curves for walls

[naderaly]

Dear All,
I am modeling RC shear walls with different ductility. Based on the literature I went through, a special RC shear wall shall have a mild strength and stiffness degradation. On the other hand, an ordinary RC shear wall might have a severe or moderate degradation. my question is do I have to use different element classes to account for the different hysteretic behavior, or I have to use Links with different hysteresis curves for each wall?

[ruipinho]

naderaly,

Do read the Verification Report of SeismoStruct, including Example 4.2, which features the modelling of a structural wall.

You may also find useful to carry out a search on this Forum using the word "wall".

Regards,

Rui

[naderaly]

Rui,

Thank you for the very useful information. I have went through example 4-2. They have used force based element class for the special RC wall. However, I am still unable to verify whether the software is capable of differentiating between ordinary and special shear walls from their properties or I will have define links with the appropriate response curve for each type.

Best Regards,
Nader

[ruipinho]

Nader, hi.

Have you tried modelling those different walls with different properties, comparing then their cyclic response?

If you do that, then it should be possible for you to assess if the program was able to adequately account for the response differences that you were expecting to see when the wall properties are varied.

And, if you want my guess, what is likely to happen is that if the wall response is dominated by flexure deformation, then you are likely to get good response estimates, whilst if shear deformations are important, then the response predictions might not necessarily reflect what you would get in a real case.

Best,

Rui

[naderaly]

Thanks Rui. I did try to model the walls using different element classes and for each I was getting different behavior. However, for slender walls (height more than twice the width) I was getting very weird hysteretic curves for the walls.

Best Regards,
Nader Aly