| The behavior of shear-wall dominant, low-rise, multistory reinforced concrete shear-wall dominant building structures commonly built in Chile, Japan, Italy and Middle East countries are investigated. Because there are no beams or columns and the slab and wall thickness are approximately equal, available codes give little information relative to design for gravity and lateral loads. Items which effect the analysis of shear-wall dominant building structures, ie. material nonlinearity including rotating crack capability, 3-D behavior, slab-wall interaction, floor flexibilities, stress concentrations around the openings, the location and the amount of the main discrete reinforcements are investigated. For this purpose 2 story and 5 story building structures are modelled. To see the importance of 3-D modelling, the same structures are modelled by both 2-D and 3-D models. Loads are applied first the vertical then lateral loads which are static equivalent earthquake loads. The 3-D models of the structures are loaded in both in the longitudinal and transverse directions. A nonlinear isoparametric shell element with arbitrarily placed edge nodes and with variable edge orders (from linear to cubic) is developed in order to consider the amount and location of the main reinforcement at the edges and around the openings, and in order to use higher order elements where the stress gradients are expected to be high. The stress concentrations and distributions around the openings are observed that they are affected by the location of the existing reversed walls in 3-D nonlinear analysis of shear-wall dominant building structures. Slab-wall interaction effects with different size of openings and possible hinge locations are investigated while lateral loads are applied in weak directions. The importance of 3-D effects due to T-C coupling of walls are indicated with basic force mechanisms. |
