Nonlinear Finite Element Analysis of Reinforced Concrete Shear Walls

Advanced computational modeling for the nonlinear analysis of reinforced concrete shear walls is presented. To this end, thirteen shear walls, with height-to-width ratios of 1.0 and 2.0, were analyzed and compared with the experimental data reported by Lefas and co-workers in 1990. These ratios were carefully chosen to enable the structural assessment of shear walls with realistic geometry under monotonic horizontal loading via computer simulations. In the analysis, the nonlinear behavior of concrete was represented by fracture-plastic constitutive models, implemented in the context of smeared crack approach and crush band method. From the results presented, it is shown that the modeling approach presented in this paper is capable of predicting the full response of the walls with good accuracy. This includes the post-cracking response, failure loads and crack patterns at various stages of loading, which are useful to characterize failure process. The influence of key parameters (height-to-width ratio, axial load ratio, web reinforcement ratio) on overall response is discussed.