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Nonlinear analysis of shear wall in unified performance based seismic design

of buildings

Article  in  Asian Journal of Civil Engineering · June 2017

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 ASIAN JOURNAL OF CIVIL ENGINEERING (BHRC) VOL. 18, NO. 4(2017)
PAGES 633-642

NONLINEAR ANALYSIS OF SHEAR WALL IN UNIFIED

PERFORMANCE BASED SEISMIC DESIGN OF BUILDINGS

P.P. Debnath1 and S. Choudhury2

1
Public Works Department, Govt. of Tripura, India
2
Department of Civil Engineering, National Institute of Technology Silchar, India

Received: 10 October 2016; Accepted: 3 December 2016

ABSTRACT

Frame - shear wall buildings are common for high rise multi-storied RC buildings. When
these walls are situated in advantageous positions in a building, they perform as an efficient
lateral-force resisting system, and also fulfilling other functional requirements. In
conventional analysis, shear wall is modeled as wide column, which does not always
provide the realistic behavior of a shear wall. In this present work, buildings have been
modeled and designed, and a detailed analysis is carried out on structural walls. The building
frame and length of shear wall design has been carried out by Unified Performance Based
Design (UPBD) with takes both elastic and plastic rotation into consideration along with
performance level. In this study shear walls are modeled as multi layered shell element
which is an advanced addition in SAP2000 software. A few challenges in interpreting the
performances of shear wall as per UPBD method were faced while using shell element.
Non-linear analysis with shell element is carried out and attempts to interpret its
performance in terms of stresses in different layers and hinge rotation have been carried out.

Keywords: Performance based design; unified performance based design; multi-layered

shell element; performance level; plastic rotation; shear wall.

1. INTRODUCTION

Earthquake induced lateral forces on the building and the horizontal shear force resulting
from it is often assigned to structural elements which referred to as shear walls. In the recent
past, it has been well established that a combination of frame and shear wall building system
has enhanced structural performance during the event of an earthquake like catastrophe.
Therefore, proper modelling of shear-wall buildings in computational analysis is necessary
so as to better understand its behavior. In conventional analysis, shear wall, is modelled as
wide column, which does not always provide the realistic behaviour of a shear wall. Also, in


E-mail address of the corresponding author: parthapdebnath@yahoo.in (P.P. Debnath)
634 P.P. Debnath and S. Choudhury

high rise buildings, where thickness of shear wall is more, multi layered steel is common
along with confined concrete. Existing literatures exists regarding optimized dual system
design by Kaveh [1,2],the current study can also lead to optimized sections.
Though there exist a lot of nonlinear analysis procedures for frame structural elements
like columns and beams, non-linear analysis for shear walls needs further study to better
incorporate in structural design of buildings. There are several methods to evaluate the
behaviour of shear wall, like that of mid-pier element or wide column element and shell
element. The non-linear behavior of shear wall is generally based on plastic hinge concept
and a bilinear rotation relationship. In this present study, multi layered shell element is
modelled. In this element concrete and reinforcement inside the structural element are
modelled respectively with different fibers so that the cyclic behaviour of the material can be
properly simulated. In the present study, non-linear analysis has been carried out for dual
system buildings of height of 10 stories. The design has been done as per performance based
seismic design. Design methodology of Unified Performance Based Design (UPBD) has
been the tool for design. Beams and lengths and shear wall length have been decided as per
UPBD method of design. Understanding the performances in terms of stresses and rotation
has been studied.

2. DESIGN PHILOSOPHY

A displacement-based design (DDBD) procedure for perimeter-enclosed frame buildings

was given by Pettinga and Priestley [11]. At a later stage, a DDBD procedure initially
proposed by Sullivan et. al [13] for structures that comprise both frames and shear walls is
presented in this method. The Multiple Degree of Freedom (MDOF) structure has to be
converted into a equivalent Single Degree of Freedom (ESDOF) structure by assigning
strength proportions and subsequently using moment profile in the walls to set a design
displaced shape. With knowledge of the displacement profile, various equivalent SDOF
properties of the structure are obtained.
Choudhury [3] has further improved Direct Displacement Based Design of frame-wall
buildings proposed by Sullivan [13] by combining the inter-storey drift and performance
level in the theoretical treatment. The performance level of the building is related directly
with the beam size. The sizes of beams are obtained as per Choudhury [3] and Mayengbam
[10].
The performance parameters of common interest are: (1) inter-storey drift and, (2)
member performance level. Thus the sizes of beams and length of shear wall are to be
designed as per DDBD where only the yield rotation is considered.

(1)

where, is the frame yield rotation, is the yield strain of material, is the length of
beam and is the beam depth.
Whereas the design angular drift of the beam, is the sum of yield rotation and plastic
 NONLINEAR ANALYSIS OF SHEAR WALL IN UNIFIED PERFORMANCE BASED … 635

rotation ( ) which may be expressed as in equation (2).

Figure 1. Equivalent SDoF

(2)

And hence the depth of beam may be given as:

(3)

Similarly, also for shear wall, the length ( is obtained as:

(4)

where, is the height of inflection and is the wall plastic rotation from FEMA
356.
After the target drift and design displacement is decided, the equivalent single degree
freedom properties are determined as per Sullivan et al. [13]. As the design displacement
and the equivalent viscous damping is produced, the time period of structure can be
determined from the displacement spectra. The displacement spectra corresponding to
design acceleration spectra are generated for various damping.
The Equivalent SDoF properties can be determined from:

(5)

(6)

(7)
636 P.P. Debnath and S. Choudhury

where, is design displacement, effective mass and effective height respectively.

The equivalent viscous damping is obtained from

(8)

With the effective period established, the effective stiffness is determined in

accordance with:

= (9)

This effective stiffness is then multiplied by the design displacement, ∆d, to obtain the
base shear, Vb as:

= (10)

The base shear force is distributed up the height of the structure as:

(11)

The design is done with expected (mean) strengths of materials. As per FEMA-356
provisions the expected strength of concrete is 1.5 times of the 28-days characteristic
strength and, that for steel is 1.25 times the yield strength of rebar. The load combinations
used for design are:

DL + LL (12)
DL + LL F(x) (13)
DL + LL F(y) (14)

where, DL, LL, F(x), F(y) correspond to dead load, live load, seismic load in x and y
directions, respectively.

3. MODELLING

A typical plan of the 10-storey building model adopted is shown in Fig. 2. The buildings
materials considered were M30 concrete and Fe415 grade steel with expected strength as per
FEMA 356. The beam sections were designed as per UPBD method and column sections by
trials. The cross sections of the columns and floor to floor height were assumed to be
constant over the entire height. Columns were maintained a steel of 3% to 4% of total cross
sectional area along with capacity design. The capacity design of strong-column and weak-
beam was satisfied as per EC-8. Buildings were designed for Life Safety (LS) performance
 NONLINEAR ANALYSIS OF SHEAR WALL IN UNIFIED PERFORMANCE BASED … 637

level and Collapse Prevention (CP). Three dimensional physical and analytical models of the
structure are shown in Fig. 4.
The inflection height of the frame–shear wall building is calculated by finding the
moments carried by shear wall. The vertical distribution of wall moment is found out by
subtracting the linear distribution of frame moments from the total moments. At the wall
moment, there exists a contra-flexure point and the height up to that point from the base is
considered as the inflection height.

30 Point of inflection
24

18

12

0
-1 2 5 8 11
Figure 2. Plan of the building model (SW is Figure 3. Height of inflection in a multi-story
shear wall) building

Here in this study, multi layered shell element is considered to model shear wall and thus
understand the seismic response of these elements. In the past, Kim [7] had proposed a general
nonlinear finite element procedure for analysis of shell structures. But analysis with respect to
displacement based design needs further investigation. Although the shell element
formulations include the drilling degree of freedom, analytical results show inconsistency and
sensitivity of the drilling moment to mesh sizes and loading conditions. This shortcoming has
significant effects on the bending moment of the in-plane beams connected to the shear wall.
To resolve this problem, in engineering practice, the beam connecting to shear wall are
generally modelled inside the shear wall shell elements [5].

Figure 4. 3D physical and analytical model of 10 story building with shear wall
 638 P.P. Debnath and S. Choudhury

When these shell elements are provided in the building, intermediate link beams or rigid
beams are to be provided so that proper connection and behaviour of the wall can be well
established with adjoining beams and columns. The rigid elements provided are generally of
highly elastic materials ( 10 times of modulus of elasticity of concrete). Fig. 5 shows a
finite element modelling of a shell element section.

Figure 6. Multi layered shell element in

Figure 5. Shell element provided with link beams
SAP2000

The purpose of these rigid beams, whose dimensions are same as adjoining beams
framing into wall, is to minimize the mesh sensitivity effect caused by the inadequacy of
drilling degree of freedom formulations [8]. By this method stable estimation of M3 moment
and other internal forces for both shear-wall and connecting beams are achieved. The multi-
layer shell element is based on the principles of composite material mechanics and it can
simulate the coupled in-plane/out-plane bending and the coupled in-plane bending-shear
nonlinear behaviours of RC shear walls. The shell element is made up of many layers with
different thickness.
Different material properties were assigned to various layers as shown in Fig. 6. This
means that the reinforcement bars are smeared into one layer or more. During the finite
element calculation, the axial strain and curvature of the middle layer can be obtained in one
element. Then according to the assumption that plane remains plane, the strains and the
curvatures of the other layers can be calculated. And then the corresponding stress will be
calculated through the constitutive relations of the material assigned to the layer.
The amount of steel provided in the multi-layered shell element in two layers is
according to IS 13920:1993 designed against the highest moment for the load combinations
given in equations (12), (13) and (14).

5. ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF RESULTS

The building models designed with multi-layered shell element have been analyzed with
 NONLINEAR ANALYSIS OF SHEAR WALL IN UNIFIED PERFORMANCE BASED … 639

Non-linear Time History Analysis (NLTHA) with ground a motion which was made
compatible to EC-8 at Maximum Considered Earthquake (MCE) level. The compatible
acceleration - time history data of N. Palm Spring 1986 earthquake made by using Kumar
[9] used for the analysis is presented in Fig. 7. At the end of the time history analysis
performance levels were studied for the member elements in the building for each discreet
time periods. The behaviour and status of the frame elements like beams and columns were
studied by formation of plastic hinges in these elements.

2
1.5
Acceleration (g)

1
0.5
0
-0.5
-1
Time (sec)
-1.5
0 5 10 15 20 25
Figure 7. Acceleration-time history of N. Palm Spring 1986 0920, USGS station 5070

From NLTHA various results corresponding to beam, column and shear wall
performance has been attained. For performance based design, the recommendation of
FEMA 356 defines the performance criteria for the flexural RC members in terms of plastic
rotations. It has been observed that member performances of beam and column have attained
the required performance level of Life Safety (LS), and Collapse Prevention (CP) which
were identified by plastic hinge rotations as displayed in Fig. 8.
On the contrary, using multi layered shell element for shear wall modelling, the nonlinear
behaviour can be examined by checking out the stresses in concrete and reinforcement
layers. Also since, shell element is not a lumped plasticity element, it does not show any
hinge formation like other elements. Separate stress diagrams are available for all the four
layers in the shell element. The behaviour of the shear wall may be understood from the
stress diagrams.

Figure 8. Formation of plastic hinge in beams, columns

640 P.P. Debnath and S. Choudhury

From Fig. 9, it can be observed that, as the grade of steel provided was of expected
strength, i.e. 415 × 1.25 N/mm2 which gives a value of nearly 518 N/mm2 has exceeded its
expected stress in the bottom storey of shear wall. So, if the yield stress value or the
expected stress value is exceeded, then it is to be understood that the wall has attained
plastic stage or there is a hinge formation.

Figure 9. Stress diagrams in top steel layer of shell element

Figure 10. Moment-rotation diagram for shell element

Also, SAP2000 software has another application of determining the total rotation in shear
wall as shown in Fig. 10. This can be computed by plotting between section cut forces and
generalized displacements which in turn provides the moment versus rotation graph in a
hysteresis loop. From this graph the maximum rotation can be determined, however FEMA
356 plastic rotations performance levels could not be applied to understand the elastic and
plastic rotations at the end of time history.
 NONLINEAR ANALYSIS OF SHEAR WALL IN UNIFIED PERFORMANCE BASED … 641

5. CONCLUSIONS

This paper discusses about the interpretation of RC shear wall modelled as a double layered
shell element. Shell element can be used to model confined as well as unconfined concrete
in the same wall unlike modelling shear wall as a column element. The findings of the work
clearly indicates that, the shell element provides a realistic behaviour of frame-shear wall
system in a building, but indirect approaches to understand hinge formation in shear walls
had to be identified. It is also identified that in column elements, hinge represents lumped
plasticity while in non-linear layered shell it appears as localized plasticity and does not
provide with a plastic hinge formation.
Thus to understand the non linearity, the two major tools available are the stress diagrams
and moment-rotation diagrams, but even then the elastic rotation and plastic rotation could
not be identified separately which was a specific criterion in Unified Performance Based
Design (UPBD) of buildings. Thus it can be stated that, to design shear walls with shell
elements, explicit elastic and plastic rotations needs to be identified to know the actual
structural performance level at performance point of a push over analysis and at the end of
an earthquake simulation. As such further improvement is required in modelling with multi-
layered shell element for performance based seismic design of buildings.

REFERENCES

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wall - frame structures via CSS algorithm, Asian Journal of Civil Engineering,
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