Seismic shear and moment demands in reinforced concrete wall buildings

Abstract

This research aims to obtain envelopes of the moment and shear demands in reinforced concrete(RC) wall buildings subjected to ground motions. These envelopes are intended to beused for designing RC buildings. Three research buildings with non-rectangular walls designedaccording to Eurocode 8 are considered. The seismic performance of the buildings isevaluated from nonlinear response history analysis (NRHA) with increasing levels of groundmotion intensity. The RC walls are simulated with a model with distributed inelasticity (MDI),which considers that the nonlinear behaviour can take place at any building level if the demandis larger than the wall yield capacity, while the flexural stiffness is a function of themoment demand of the wall. The design envelopes for moment and shear forces are obtainedfrom the results of the NRHA, where the effects of higher modes are evidenced.