Numerical Study on Shear Stress Variation of RC Wall with L Shaped Section

Abstract

In recent years, and after the 2003 Boumerdes earthquake, a new type of building is being constructed in Algeria. The new concept is based on the concentration of reinforced concrete shear walls with L shape at the building corners. The seismic behavior of such configuration is not well known nowadays. Numerical investigation was carried out on reinforced concrete structure to evaluate the stress distribution at the base of the corner L shaped walls. Influence of number of stories, length of the shear wall as well as the thickness of the wall was considered in our investigation. In total, more than 200 numerical models were crated and analyzed. The analyses showed that, reinforced concrete wall with 15 cm, or less, in thickness should have a minimum length of 10 times the thickness; however, for RC walls with a thickness of more than 20 cm, the length of the wall should be greater than 7 times the thickness. In this paper the main results of this investigation are presented.