Numerical Study on Lateral Deflection and

Flexural Capacity of RC Shear Wall with and

without Enlarged Boundary Element

Abhishek Kumar1, Soumi Rajbanshi2 and Kaustubh Dasgupta3

1
M.Tech Student, Dept. of Civil Engineering, IIT Guwahati, India
abhk311@gmail.com
2
Ph.D Scholar, Dept. of Civil Engineering, IIT Guwahati, India.
soumi7492@iitg.ac.in
3
Associate Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, IIT Guwahati, India.
kd@iitg.ac.in

Abstract Reinforced Concrete (RC) special shear wall is widely used in the lateral
load resisting system of multistoried buildings due to its large in-plane lateral
strength and lateral stiffness. In the present study, the influence of enlarged bound-
ary elements on the possible seismic behaviour of such shear wall is studied. De-
tailed finite element modelling of a slender RC shear wall is carried out with en-
larged boundary elements. 8-noded solid elements and 2- noded truss elements are
used for modelling the concrete and the reinforcement parts, respectively. Material
nonlinearity is considered by assigning damaged plasticity model properties to con-
crete and bilinear strain-hardening constitutive model to reinforcement, respec-
tively. For obtaining the effectiveness of the enlarged boundary elements, another
shear wall with rectangular cross-section is modelled considering the total plan area
to be the same for both the wall sections. Nonlinear static analysis is carried out for
both the models under varying axial compression. Based on the lateral load-defor-
mation response, strain distribution profiles and dam-age characteristics, the wall
section with enlarged boundary elements is observed to have better peak flexural
capacity and the lateral drift level at the instant of peak flexural capacity as com-
pared to the rectangular wall.

Keyword: Shear wall, Boundary element, Flexural capacity, Pushover analysis

2

Introduction

Shear walls are widely used in tall buildings to resist lateral loads imposed by
wind or earthquakes by virtue of large in-plane lateral strength and lateral stiffness.
Severe earthquake shaking leads to large bending moment and axial load demands
at different sections along the height of a shear wall. Also, for rectangular shear wall
sections, the vertical and horizontal steel reinforcement in the boundary part of the
wall need to be designed for imparting the required ductility capacity. Convention-
ally, the walls are placed between building columns and the confinement reinforce-
ment of the columns or enlarged boundary elements is used to provide the required
ductility capacity [1, 2]. Although different studies have been carried out in the past
investigating the behavior of shear walls, the effectiveness of enlarged boundary
element for enhancing the lateral strength and ductility capacity of a rectangular
shear wall section, has not been investigated. The objectives of this study are to
observe the actual flexural capacity and lateral drift characteristics of the rectangu-
lar shaped wall with and without enlarged boundary element.

Modelling Methodology

In the present study, nonlinear static analysis has been carried out for shear wall
with and without enlarged boundary element, using the ABAQUS program [3]. The
concrete part is modelled using eight-noded linear hexahedral solid elements with
reduced integration (C3D8R). Two noded linear truss element (T3D2) is used to
model the steel reinforcement. Reinforcement is embedded in concrete and pro-
vided with embedded region constraint for proper interaction. Tie constraint is given
to connect the different parts of the shear wall. Material nonlinearity is modelled
using Concrete Damaged Plasticity (CDP) [4] model for concrete and strain hard-
ening characteristic is used in the stress-strain curve for steel reinforcement. Force-
controlled analysis is carried out for obtaining the required response of the shear
wall.
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Model Validation

For validation of the analysis procedure, an RC wall from a past study is consid-
ered [5]. The cross sectional dimensions of the 2 m high rectangular wall are 1000
mm in length and 100 mm in thickness, respectively. The grades of concrete and
rebar used are C80 and HRB400 respectively. The other parameters adopted for the
model include an axial load of 1004 kN and design ductility demand of 3.
In the linear range of force-displacement curve, both numerical and experimental
results are observed to be in close proximity (Fig. 1). Although the same trend is
obtained for the numerical and experimental response in the nonlinear range, lateral
shear capacity in numerical model is observed to be marginally higher as compared
to the experimental model. That could be due to the unavailability of the actual
material characteristics obtained during the experiment. Thus, the mentioned anal-
ysis procedure can be adopted for further analysis of the wall models. The values of
lateral load and lateral displacement (𝜟) at a few salient points are shown in Table
1.
Table 1: Lateral loads and displacements for validation
Method Cracking Yielding Ultimate
Load 𝜟 Load 𝜟(mm) Load 𝜟(mm)
(kN) (mm) (kN) (kN)
Experimental 160 3.1 264 8.5 326.3 20.4
Numerical 194 3.0 298 8.0 367.0 20.0

500 Numerical test

Horizontal force (kN)

400
300
200
100
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Horizontal Displacement(mm)
Fig. 1 Variation of lateral load with lateral deflection of shear wall for numerical and experimental
investigations.
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Comparative Analysis

The previously mentioned modelling and analysis are used for investigating the
comparative behaviour of rectangular shear wall with and without enlarged bound-
ary element. The program ABAQUS offers two techniques to solve the problems,
namely (a) ABAQUS/Standard and (b) ABAQUS/Explicit. Both the techniques
solve the equilibrium equations using numerical step-by-step procedure at discrete
intervals of time Δt apart. Although convergence issues arise for
ABAQUS/Standard version due to the selected small increments of time in analysis
involving material nonlinearity, the same version is used in the present study. A
realistic stress-strain curve for unconfined concrete of grade M30, is used for as-
signing material properties in the Concrete Damaged Plasticity (CDP) model (Fig.
2a). The stress-strain curve used for Fe500 grade of reinforcement is of the same
nature as assigned in the validation study earlier (Fig. 2b). A mesh size of 50 mm is
considered for both the shear wall models. All the translational and rotational De-
grees of Freedom (DOFs) are restrained at the base of the wall. Under a constant
level of external vertical load applied at the top of the wall, force-controlled lateral
pushover analysis is carried out for both the models. For the adopted CDP model,
the dilation angle, eccentricity, viscosity parameter, shape factor (Kc) and the stress
ratio (𝝈b0/𝝈c0) are assumed as 550, 0.1, 0.01, 0.667 and 1.16 respectively [6].

40 600
Stress(N/mm2)

Stress(N/mm2)

30
400
20
200
10
0 0
0 0.002 0.004 0.006 0 0.05 0.1 0.15
Strain Strain

(a) (b)

Fig. 2 Stress-strain curves for modelling of shear wall: (a) M30 concrete and (b) Fe 500 grade of
reinforcement.

The dimensions of shear wall with enlarged boundary element are decided in
accordance with the minimum requirements as per the Indian Ductile Detailing
Code IS 13920: 2016 [7]. The total length and the height of wall are 1.6 m and 3.1
m respectively for both the models. Vertical reinforcement ratios in boundary ele-
ment and the web are considered as 0.8% and 0.25% respectively. Horizontal rein-
forcement ratio is taken as 0.25% and closed ties of 8 mm diameter with center to
center spacing of 100mm are provided in the boundary elements. To compare the
effectiveness of enlarged boundary element, a rectangular shear wall is considered
 5

such that the overall cross-sectional area, cross-sectional area of boundary element
and vertical reinforcement are the same as those for the wall model with enlarged
boundary elements.

(a)

(b)
Fig. 3 Cross-section and reinforcement details of shear wall section (a) with enlarged bound-
ary elements and (b) without enlarged boundary elements (all dimensions in m unless mentioned
otherwise)

. Results and Discussion

Both the shear wall models, with and without enlarged boundary elements, are
subjected to varying axial compression, namely 0.2%, 10%, 20%, 30% and 50% of
the design axial load carrying capacity (Fig. 4).
Ultimate lateral capacity is considered to be attained at the instant of yielding of
longitudinal reinforcement. It is observed that the presence of enlarged boundary
element increases the flexural capacity of the shear wall. The observed drift level of
rectangular wall is higher as compared to the observed drift level for the wall with
6

enlarged boundary elements, which implies that the presence of enlarged boundary
element increases the lateral stiffness of the structural wall. Also for increasing axial
load, the lateral shear capacity is observed to be increasing for both models. At low
axial load, tensile strain is higher for walls without enlarged boundary element but
at high axial load, both tensile and compressive strains are higher for wall without
enlarged boundary element (Fig. 5).

1500 With EBE10 KN With EBE 520 KN

With EBE 1040 KN With EBE 1560 KN
Without EBE 10 KN Without EBE 520 KN
Without EBE 1040 KN Without EBE 1560 KN
Without EBE 2600KN With EBE 2600 KN

1000
Lateral Load (kN)

500

0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14

Lateral Displacement (mm)

Fig. 4 Variation of lateral shear capacity with lateral deflection for the wall models at various
vertical load levels.
 7

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

Fig. 5 Strain profile at 0.2% axial load ratio for wall (a) with enlarged boundary element and (b)
without enlarged boundary element; strain profile at 50% axial load ratio for wall (c) with enlarged
boundary element and (d) without enlarged boundary element.
8

Conclusions

From the present study, it is concluded that the presence of enlarged boundary
element effectively enhances the wall performance by increasing its ultimate lateral
load capacity and reducing damage level in the wall panel. The finite element model
predicted damage pattern quite well, and hence predicted the ability of boundary
elements in reducing damage level and crack distribution. This is attributed to the
fact that boundary elements carry a large amount of axial force which reduces axial
stress level in wall panels.

References

[1] Taleb, R., Kono, S., Tani, M., and Sakashita, M. (2014). Effects of end re-
gions confinement on seismic performance of RC cantilever walls. Proceedings of
the 10th US National Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Anchorage (pp. 21-
25)
[2] Taleb, R., Watanabe, H., and Kono, S. (2018). Numerical Study on the Ulti-
mate Deformation of RC Structural Walls with Confined Boundary Regions. Peri-
odica Polytechnica Civil Engineering, 62(1), 191-199
[3] Hibbit, Karlsson and Sorensen, Inc.: ABAQUS/Standard user’s manual (Ver-
sion 6.11-3), Pawtucket, RI, 2010
[4] Lubliner, J., Oliver, J., Oller, S., Onate, E. (1989). “ A Plastic-Damage Model
for Concrete”. International Journal of Solids and Structures, 25(3), 299-326
[5] Deng, M. K., Liang, X. W., and Yang, K. (2008). Experimental study on
seismic behavior of high performance concrete shear wall with new strategy of
transverse confining stirrups. In Proceeding of the 14th World Conference on
Earthquake Engineering, Xi’an University of Architecture & Technology,
China (pp. 1-8)
[6] Gulec, C. K., and Whittaker, A. S. (2009). “Performance-Based Assessment
and Design of Squat Reinforced Concrete Shear Walls.” MCEER Technical Report-
09-0010, MCEER, Buffalo
[7] Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) (2016). “Indian Standard Code of Practice
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Forces, IS 13920:2016, Bureau of Indian Standards, New Delhi