The length of plastic hinge area in the flanged reinforced concrete shear walls subjected to earthquake ground motions

Abstract

Past earthquakes have shown that appropriately designed and detailed buildings with shear walls have great performance such a way that a considerable portion of inelastic energy dissipation occurs in these structural elements. A plastic hinge is fundamentally an energy diminishing means which decrease seismic input energy through the inelastic deformation. Plastic hinge development in a RC shear wall in the areas which have plastic behavior depends on the ground motions characteristics as well as shear wall details. One of the most generally used forms of structural walls is flanged RC wall. Because of the flanges, these types of shear walls have large in-plane and out-of-plane stiffness and develop high shear stresses. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the main characteristics of these structural components and provide a more comprehensive expression of plastic hinge length in the application of performance-based seismic design method and promote the development of seismic design codes for shear walls. In this regard, the effects of axial load level, wall height, wall web and flange length, as well as various features of earthquakes, are examined numerically by finite element methods and the outcomes are compared with consistent experimental data. Based on the results, a new expression is developed which can be utilized to determine the length of plastic hinge area in the flanged RC shear walls.