Seismic Performance of R.C Buildings with Shear wall





INTRODUCTION

RC buildings often have vertical plate-like RC walls called Shear Walls (or structural walls) in addition to slabs, beams and columns. These walls start at foundation level and continuous throughout the building height having thickness as low as 150 mm, or as high as 400 mm. Shear walls are provided along length and width of a building (Fig 1) like vertically-oriented wide beams that carry earthquake loads downward to the foundation. Properly designed buildings with shear walls have shown very good performance in past earthquakes however they require special detailing in high seismic risk zones. Shear wall is a popular choice in many earthquake-prone countries like Chile, New Zealand and USA because they are easy to construct and reinforcement detailing is relatively straight-forward and therefore can easily be implemented at site. Moreover these walls are efficient, both in terms of construction cost and in minimizing earthquake damage in structural and non-structural elements (like glass windows and building contents). But in order to get maximum advantage, it must be symmetrically located in plan to reduce ill-effects of twist in buildings (fig 1). It should be placed symmetrically along one or both directions in plan and prove more effective when located along exterior perimeter of the building because such a layout increases resistance of the building to twisting.


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