Study On Seismic Performance Of Controllable Rocking Wall-frame Structure

Traditional frame structure tends to form storey collapse at the soft storey and deformation in first floor is large subject to strong ground motion. Controllable rocking walls are added to the structure in order to improve its seismic performance.Controllable rocking wall is a shear walls pinned at the building and semi-rigid jointed at bottom which is expected to make the structure a better seismic performance than the conventional frame structure refer to the collapse prevention because the rocking wall can control the deformation in first floor and constrain a building primarily to a linear fundamental mode. This constraint prevents mid-story failure, and maximizes energy dissipation by activating the maximum number of plastic hinges throughout the structure.A quasi analysis model of controllable rocking wall-frame structure is presented which is used for predicting the seismic mitigation performance of controllable rocking walls. The model presented enables optimization of the design parameters, and consequently improved system effectiveness, analytical tractability, and material usage.A series of finite element analyses were carried out to study the seismic performances of the controllable rocking wall-frame structure. A 6-story RC frame was taken as the example. Elastic-plastic model was established and the time history analyses were also carried out. Analysis results suggest that the controllable rocking wall can significantly control the deformation in first floor and improve the strength and ductility of the frame structure. The inter-story drifts become more uniformly distributed and the soft story failure mechanism was prevented.