Analysis of shear wall with openings using super elements

Abstract

The box system that consists of reinforced concrete walls and slabs is adopted for many high-rise apartment buildings recently constructed. In an apartment building, shear walls may have one or more openings for functional reasons. Some researches on the analysis of shear wall with openings were performed, but some restrictions prevent those research results from being applied to the practical analysis and design procedure. It is necessary to use fine mesh finite element models for an accurate analysis of a box system structure with openings. But it would take a significant amount of computational time and memory if the entire building structure were subdivided into a finer mesh. An efficient analysis method that can be used regardless of the number, size and location of openings is proposed in this study. The analysis method uses super elements developed using the matrix condensation technique. Static and dynamic analyses of example structures having various types of openings were performed to verify the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed method. The analyses of example structures demonstrated that the proposed method can be used for the analysis of a shear wall structure with openings. Outstanding accuracy in analysis could be achieved with drastically reduced computational time and memory.