Cracking behavior of RC shear walls subject to cyclic loadings

Abstract

This paper presents a numerical model for simulating the nonlinear response of reinforced concrete (RC) shear walls subject to cyclic loadings. The material behavior of cracked concrete is described by an orthotropic constitutive relation with tension-stiffening and compression softening effects defining equivalent uniaxial stress-strain relation in the axes of orthotropy. Especially in making analytical predictions for inelastic behaviors of RC walls under reversed cyclic loading, some influencing factors inducing the material nonlinearities have been considered. A simple hysteretic stress-strain relation of concrete, which crosses the tension-compression region, is defined. Modification of the hysteretic stress-strain relation of steel is also introduced to reflect a pinching effect depending on the shear span ratio and to represent an average stress distribution in a cracked RC element, respectively. To assess the applicability of the constitutive model for RC element, analytical results are compared with idealized shear panel and shear wall test results under monotonic and cyclic shear loadings.