Inelastic finite element models to assess earthquake damage of RC Wall buildings

Abstract

A brittle damage pattern has been observed in some reinforced concrete (RC) shear wall buildings during recent earthquakes. Although substantial experimental and analytical research has been conducted, many questions remain about the inelastic behavior of shear walls and their interaction with the rest of the three-dimensional structure. This article presents two inelastic models of a real building damaged during the 2010, Chile earthquake, in which the brittle behavior was localized in critical walls at the first basement. Two-dimensional inelastic pushover analysis of a severely damaged resisting plane was conducted considering different displacement patterns in the software DIANA. Results show that the geometry of the failure in the wall cannot be correctly represented by conventional inelastic models with displacement patterns that ignore the lateral and axial interaction. Finally, an inelastic 3D dynamic analysis of the entire building was developed. Dynamic results considering a single ground motion recorded in the vicinity of the building are analysed and compared with the damage observed during the earthquake. Results show that the observed damage is accurately predicted by the proposed analytical model with a reasonable computational cost.