NUMERICAL ANALYSIS MODELS OF EXISTING WALL-TYPE PRECAST REINFORCED CONCRETE SHEAR WALLS WITH REINFORCEMENT FOR NEW OPENINGS

Abstract

There is a large number of existing wall-type precast reinforced concrete (WPC) residential buildings constructed before 1980 in Japan (the number of the residential units is approximately 470,000). These buildings are of high quality in term of the concrete and structural conditions; however, they are not fully in use due to their small and uniform unit plans not suiting modern living styles. Creating new openings in the existing WPC walls could widen possibilities for plan changes during renovations; however, a design methodology for new openings including structural reinforcement has not been developed. Referring to authors' previous experiments of half-scale WPC walls with new openings and reinforcement, numerical static pushover analysis models are created. The models include inelastic springs for the joints as well as line elements for the wall panels with inelastic shear springs. Because the mechanical properties of the horizontal joints, which connect panels of the upper and lower stories, highly influence the overall wall behavior, additional experiments for the joints are conducted. Using the experimentally obtained joint properties, behavior of the walls in the previous tests is well simulated.