International Conference on

Trends and Challenges in Concrete Structures

Ghaziabad, UP, India
December 19-21, 2013

Seismic Performance of R.C Buildings with Shear wall

M. Danish1, Zaid M.2, M. Shariq3, A. Masood4and A. Baqi4

1
M. Tech., Department of Civil Engineering, AMU, erdanish.amu@gmail.com
2
M. Tech., Department of Civil Engineering, AMU, zaidzhcet@gmail.com
3
Asst. Professor, CES, University Polytechnic, AMU, mshariqdce@gmail.com
4
Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, AMU, amjadmasood1@rediffmail.com, baqiamu@rediffmail.com

ABSTRACT

An earthquake force is a very strange force and behaves quite differently than Gravity and Wind loads,
striking the weakest spot in the whole three dimensional structure. It’s not earthquake that kills, in fact
ignorance in design and poor quality construction results in many weaknesses in the structure that
cause serious damage to life and property. Masonry Infill are frequently used to fill the gap between
the vertical and horizontal resisting elements of the building frames with the assumption that these
infills will not take part in resisting any kind of load either axial or lateral. Hence, its significance in
the analysis is generally neglected by the designer. In fact, infill wall and shear wall considerably
enhance the rigidity and strength of the frame structure. Various researches suggest that the bare frame
has comparatively lesser stiffness and strength than the infill frame and frame with shear wall,
therefore their ignorance cause failure of many multi-storey buildings when subjected to seismic loads.
In the present study, the finite element analysis of RC frame models viz. a bare frame; a frame with
shear wall considering infill; a bare frame with shear wall has been carried out and the number of
storeys vary as G+3, G+5, G+7 and G+9. Linear analysis of all RC frame structures has been
performed as per IS: 1893 (Part 1) - 2002 and IS: 456 - 2000. In this study only in-plane stiffness of
masonry wall has been considered and infill panels modelled as equivalent diagonal strut elements.
The behaviour of buildings subjected to Gravity and Seismic loads with the help of Response Spectrum
Analysis using FEM based software and the effect on Time Period, Mass Participation factor, and
Storey Drift has been observed. Strength and Rigidity of RC bare frame structures is found increasing
after the inclusion of infill panels and shear wall.

Keywords: Seismic analysis, Shear Wall, Equivalent diagonal strut, Response Spectrum, SRSS
 International Conference on
Trends and Challenges in Concrete Structures
Ghaziabad, UP, India
December 19-21, 2013

INTRODUCTION

RC buildings often have vertical plate-like RC walls called Shear Walls (or structural walls)
in addition to slabs, beams and columns. These walls start at foundation level and continuous
throughout the building height having thickness as low as 150 mm, or as high as 400 mm.
Shear walls are provided along length and width of a building (Fig 1) like vertically-oriented
wide beams that carry earthquake loads downward to the foundation. Properly designed
buildings with shear walls have shown very good performance in past earthquakes however
they require special detailing in high seismic risk zones. Shear wall is a popular choice in
many earthquake-prone countries like Chile, New Zealand and USA because they are easy to
construct and reinforcement detailing is relatively straight-forward and therefore can easily be
implemented at site. Moreover these walls are efficient, both in terms of construction cost and
in minimizing earthquake damage in structural and non-structural elements (like glass
windows and building contents). But in order to get maximum advantage, it must be
symmetrically located in plan to reduce ill-effects of twist in buildings (fig 1). It should be
placed symmetrically along one or both directions in plan and prove more effective when
located along exterior perimeter of the building because such a layout increases resistance of
the building to twisting.

Fig. 1 RC Shear Walls built at corner in a building frame (left), Shear Walls must be
Symmetric in Plan layout (right)

Due to the fact that shear wall is a very essential component providing sufficient lateral
strength and preventing severe damage to life and property but inadequate detailing, poor
quality material and substandard construction could lead to its failure (fig.2) which may be
fatal to both life and property.
 International Conference on
Trends and Challenges in Concrete Structures
Ghaziabad, UP, India
December 19-21, 2013

Fig 2 Shear wall ripped off due to earthquake

LITERATURE REVIEW

Smith (1962, 1966) used an elastic theory to propose the effective width of the equivalent
strut and concluded that this width should be a function of the stiffness of the infill with
respect to that of bounding frame. By analogy to a beam on elastic foundation, he defined the
dimensionless relative parameters to determine the degree of frame-infill interaction and
thereby, the effective width of the strut. Singh (1995) found in his research that in the
dynamic analysis of a complete building system, the inclusion of the effect of infill is
essential for a realistic prediction of its behaviour and concluded further that there is very
limited literature available on dynamic response of 3-D infilled reinforcement concrete
frames. Bell and Davidson (2001) found that a review of international research and guidelines
indicate that infill panels, where present in a regular arrangement, have a significant
beneficial influence on the behaviour of RC buildings. These contrasts with New Zealand
guidelines, which can give an impression that infill masonry panels have a detrimental
influence on the behaviour of buildings due to soft storey effects. The reviewed sources
indicate that due to stiffness, strength, and damping effects of infill panels, deformations are
below that required for a soft storey mechanism. Das and Murty (2004) carried out non-linear
pushover analysis on five RC frame buildings with brick masonry in-fills, designed for the
same seismic hazard as per Euro-code, Nepal Building Code and Indian Code and the
equivalent braced frame method given in literature. Infills are found to increase the strength
and stiffness of the structure, and reduce the drift capacity and structural damage and also
reduce the overall structure ductility, but increase the overall strength. Building designed by
the equivalent braced frame method show better performance. Amato et al (2008) discussed
the mechanical behaviour of single storey-single bay infilled frames and generalized
analytical procedures available in the literature for the identification of a pin-jointed strut
equivalent to the infill to take the influence of vertical loads into account. Detailed numerical
investigation on infilled meshes has proved that in the presence of vertical loads it is possible
 International Conference on
Trends and Challenges in Concrete Structures
Ghaziabad, UP, India
December 19-21, 2013

that a strong correlation between the dimension of the equivalent diagonal strut model and a
single parameter, which depends on the characteristics of the system. Baran and Sevil (2010)
have found through various analytical and experimental studies that hollow brick infills could
not only increase both strength and stiffness of RC frames but also adequately be modelled by
diagonal compression struts. Asteris et al (2011) conducted quasi-static experiments on
frames with masonry infill panels with openings that reveal important insights regarding the
global as well as the local response of the tested infill frames. In particular, the experimental
results indicate that the failure modes of the infilled frames classified into distinct modes.
Such a classification of the failure modes (crack patterns) enhances considerably the
understanding of the earthquake resistant behaviour of infilled frames and leads to improved
comprehension of their modelling, analysis and design. Mohan and Prabha (2011) concluded
that Equivalent Static Method can be used effectively for symmetric buildings up to 25m
height. For higher and unsymmetrical buildings, response spectrum method shall be used.
However for important structures, time history analysis shall be performed as it predicts the
structural response more accurately in comparison with other two methods since it
incorporates P-Δ effects and material non-linearity, which is true in real structures. Danish et
al (2013) has found that structures with shear walls perform better than both infilled and bare
frames under seismic loads. Therefore, we can conclude that the presence of infill and shear
wall influence the behaviour of moment resisting frame and the characteristic configuration
of the infill panels can alter the predominant mode of structural action particularly when the
frame is subjected to lateral loads.

METHODOLOGY

In the present study, the finite element analysis of RC frame models viz. a bare frame; with
shear wall considering infill; a bare frame with shear wall has been carried out and the
number of storeys varied from G+3 to G+9. Seismic analysis of all RC frame structures
performed as per IS: 1893 (Part 1) - 2002 and IS: 456 – 2000 using response spectrum
method (SRSS). Masonry walls are modelled as equivalent diagonal struts while considering
only in-plane stiffness. Shear walls provided symmetrically at the corners of the building (fig.
3) and start at ground level continuous throughout the top floor and considered to be of
uniform thickness of 250 mm. The plan (fig. 4) of the RC frame structure is 14.4 m wide and
24.4 m long measured along the central line of the columns fixed at ground level and storey
heights are taken to be 3.35 m each with solid RCC slab of 110 mm thick carrying dead and
live loads. Section details for beams, columns and thickness of infills are given in table 1.
Infills without openings are considered in the analysis and its width of equivalent diagonal
strut is calculated (table 2) using .

Where,
 International Conference on
Trends and Challenges in Concrete Structures
Ghaziabad, UP, India
December 19-21, 2013

Em= Elastic Modulus of masonry wall

Ef = Elastic Modulus of masonry of frame material
t = Thickness of the infill wall
h = Height of the infill wall
L = Length of the infill wall
Ic = Moment of Inertia of the column of the frame
Ib = Moment of Inertia of the beam of the frame
θ = tan-1 (h/L)
w = Width of the Equivalent Strut

Fig 3 Shear wall located symmetrically at all corners of building

Fig. 4 Plan of a building also showing presence of infills (highlighted as red)

 International Conference on
Trends and Challenges in Concrete Structures
Ghaziabad, UP, India
December 19-21, 2013

Table 1 Section details (*along z-direction; **along x-direction)

MEMBER SIZE (mm)

Beams (Transverse*) 500 × 300

Roof Beams (Longitudinal**) 300 × 300

Corridor Beams(Longitudinal) 300 × 300

External Beams (Longitudinal) 350 × 300

Columns 600 × 500

External Walls 250

Internal Walls 150

Slab 110

Table 2 Width of equivalent diagonal strut for both external and internal masonry infill

H (m) L (m) αh αl w (m)

3.35 6.2 1.51 2.7 1.55
3.35 6.2 1.71 3.07 1.76
3.35 6.0 1.51 2.67 1.54
3.35 6.0 1.71 3.03 1.74
3.35 2.2 1.47 2.04 1.28
3.35 2.2 1.44 1.66 1.10
3.35 3.05 1.64 1.68 1.20
1.675 3.05 1.27 2.40 1.00

Table 3 Nomenclature of building

Type of frame Nomenclature

Bare Frame A
Frame with shear walls at corners B
Frame with infills and concrete shear wall at corners C
 International Conference on
Trends and Challenges in Concrete Structures
Ghaziabad, UP, India
December 19-21, 2013

RESULTS AND DISSCUSSION

We have considered two cases firstly, the effect of shear wall and infill on bare frame;
secondly, the effect of increasing height of building and then made a comparison of dynamic
characteristics i.e. time period, modal mass participation factor (%) and storey drift.

1. Time Period In first case, the inclusion of shear wall in bare frame reduces time
period of vibration to almost 33 % in G+3, 35% in G+5, 37% in G+7 and 40% in
G+9. Further, when masonry infills become part of the frame then combine effect of
both shear wall and infills comes into picture, thus time period reduced to minimum
(see frame C in table 4). In second case, increment in height causes increment in time
period for each frame configuration (i.e. frames A, B, C and D). So we have found
that the inclusion of infills and shear wall make a building frame more rigid but the
increment in height makes it more vulnerable to vibration.

Table 4 Time periods obtained from dynamic analysis

Time
Period Time Period (sec)
Frame (sec) Frame
Building Building
type type
Mode Mode Mode Mode Mode Mode
1 2 3 1 2 3

A 0.388 0.319 0.12 A 0.605 0.496 0.191

G+3 B 0.129 0.077 0.055 G+5 B 0.211 0.129 0.074

C 0.12 0.106 0.063 C 0.162 0.093 0.60

A 0.829 0.679 0.264 A 1.061 0.864 0.340

G+7 B 0.310 0.193 0.095 G+9 B 0.420 0.266 0.120

C 0.231 0.125 0.078 C 0.312 0.160 0.097

2. Modal Mass Participation factor Firstly, for different frame configurations (i.e.
frames A, B, C and D), the mass participation factors for the 1st mode gets reduced
(table 5). Similar trend is followed by increasing the number of storeys.
 International Conference on
Trends and Challenges in Concrete Structures
Ghaziabad, UP, India
December 19-21, 2013

Table 5 Modal Mass Participation factor

Frame Mass Participation Mass Participation

Building
type factor (%) factor (%)
Frame
Building
type

Mode Mode Mode Mode Mode Mode

1 2 3 1 2 3

A 81.96 0.121 11.51 A 80.50 0.14 11.02

G+3 B 77.18 0.00 12.55 G+5 B 74.26 0.00 15.56

C 0.16 81.72 0.00 C 79.33 0.06 12.34

A 79.70 0.15 10.95 A 79.15 0.14 11.03

G+7 B 72.28 0.00 17.06 G+9 B 71.11 0.00 17.51

C 76.66 0.22 14.48 C 74.30 0.40 16.14

3. Storey Drift Plot of height v/s storey drift (fig. 5) for each frame configurations
given in table 3 best represent the behaviour of structure under seismic loads. In first
case, maximum storey drift reduced to about 30% when shear walls are introduced in
a bare frame and there is further reduction in storey drift to almost 18%, when the
effect of both infill and shear wall is considered. Thus bare frame is more vulnerable
to lateral movement under seismic event compared to a frame with infills and shear
wall. In second case however, increasing number of storeys result in increasing
lateral movement causing more storey drift and therefore we have found that high
rise buildings with no shear wall are vulnerable to collapse under seismic loads and
dangerous to both life and property.
 International Conference on
Trends and Challenges in Concrete Structures
Ghaziabad, UP, India
December 19-21, 2013

Fig. 5 Height v/s Storey Drift for frames G+3 to G+9

CONCLUSION

 Infill and shear walls considerably enhance the rigidity and strength of the frame structure
The present study leads to the following conclusion

therefore, neglecting them in analysis & design of structure will lead to failure due to

 Symmetry in position of shear wall in plan is a key factor to obtain desirable performance
stiffness irregularity.

 Increment in number of storeys make the building frame more vulnerable and therefore
of shear wall structure.

shear wall becomes a necessity in high rise buildings to save damage due to earthquake.

REFERENCES
1. Smith B S (1966), “The Composite Behaviour of Infilled Frames”, In Proceedings of a
Symposium on Tall Buildings with Particular Reference to Shear Wall Structures, University of
Southampton, Department of Civil Engineering. Oxford Pergamon Press.
 International Conference on
Trends and Challenges in Concrete Structures
Ghaziabad, UP, India
December 19-21, 2013

2. Smith B S (1962), “Lateral stiffness of infilled frames”, Journal of Structural division, ASCE, 88
(ST6), 183-199.

3. Smith B S (1966), “Behaviour of square infilled frames”, Journal of Structural division, ASCE, 92
(ST1), 381-403.

4. Singh H (1995), “Response of Reinforced Concrete Frames with Infilled Panels under Earthquake
Excitation”, PhD Thesis, Department of Civil Engineering, Thapar Institute of Engineering &
Technology.

5. Bell D K and Davidson B J (2001), “Evaluation of Earthquake Risk Buildings with Masonry Infill
Panels”, NZSEE Conference.

6. Das D and Murty C V R (2004), “Brick Masonry Infills in Seismic Design of RC Frame
Buildings: Part 2- Behaviour”, The Indian Concrete Journal.

7. Amato G, Cavaleri L, Fossetti M, and Papia M (2008), “Infilled Frames: Influence of Vertical
Load on the Equivalent Diagonal Strut Model”, The 14th World Conference on Earthquake
Engineering.

8. Baran M. and Sevil T. (2011), “Analytical and experimental studies on infilled RC frames”,
International Journal of the Physical Sciences, 5(13), 1981-1998.

9. Asteris P G, Kakaletsis D J, Chrysostomou C.Z. and Smyrou E.E. (2011), “Failure Modes of In-
filled Frames”, Electronic Journal of Structural Engineering 11(1).

10. Mohan R and Prabha C (2011), “Dynamic Analysis of RCC Buildings with Shear Wall”,
International Journal of Earth Sciences and Engineering, ISSN 0974-5904, 04(06), 659-662.

11. Danish M., Shoeb, Shariq M. and Masood A. (2013), “Seismic Performance of Masonry Infills
Reinforced Concrete Buildings”, UKIERI Concrete Congress- Innovation in Concrete
construction, 2169-2191.

12. IS 1893 (Part 1) (2002), “Indian Standard: Criteria for Earthquake Resistance Design of
Structures”, New Delhi.

13. IS 456 (2000), “Indian Standard: Plain and Reinforced Concrete- Code of Practice”, New Delhi.