Shear Behavior of RC Structural Walls

A shear panel model capable of simulating the nonlinear behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) panels under membrane-type loading is developed. The shear panel model is then incorporated into a macroscopic wall-member model and implemented in a finite element program to analyze RC structural walls. The generic wall member is idealized as a group of uniaxial elements connected in parallel and a horizontal spring. The mechanical properties of each constituent element of the wall-member model are based only on the actual behavior of the materials, without making any additional empirical assumptions. To check the reliability and the effectiveness of the wall-member model so derived, a numerical investigation was carried out by referring to the measured behavior of RC structural walls subjected to monotonic loading. The comparison between numerical and experimental results shows that the proposed wall-member model is capable of predicting, with acceptable accuracy, the measured flexural and shear responses of structural walls as well as the flexural and shear displacement components. The wall-member model, in its relative simplicity, can be efficiently incorporated into a practical nonlinear analysis of RC multistory frame-wall structural systems under monotonic loading. The possibility of extending the model to the case of cyclic loading is not investigated in this study.