Multiscale Investigations of RC Shear Wall Buildings

ABSTRACT

The precise description of reinforced concrete shear wall (RCSW) systems under severe dynamic loading remains a difficult research question owing to the intrinsically multi-scale underlying mechanisms, ranging from building’s irregularity to individual core walls, and even to the millimeter length-scales nonlinear shear over cracks and progressive steel bar buckling. This study adopted a parallel multiscale finite element analysis platform that can link the millimeter-level microphysical phenomena to the entire building-level dynamic responses in order to analyze weak pre-1980 buildings that lack modern codes such as boundary elements of walls. Results offer physically sound rationales behind the multi-scale damage behaviors.

KEYWORDS:

• Shear wall building
• multiscale analysis
• nonlinear finite element analysis
• parallel processing
• core wall

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported in part by NSF grant 1931380 and in part by the research funding of the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering of Iowa State University and the University of Jeddah-Saudi Arabia. The research reported in this paper is partially supported by the HPC@ISU equipment at Iowa State University, some of which have been purchased through funding provided by NSF under MRI grant number CNS 1229081 and CRI grant number 1205413.