Evaluation of Shear Critical Shear Walls with the Fiber Element

The paper describes the formulation of non-linear two-dimensional wall element with the one-dimensional fiber beam element using a reduced total number of degree of freedom. This paper investigates the effect of different parameters like the slenderness ratio, the concrete strength, the reinforcement ratio and the axial force of shear critical shear walls. An analytical model that couples the axial shear and bending is proposed. The concrete constitutive law is based on the recently developed soften membrane model. The shear mechanism is modeled by assuming the strain field of the section as given by the superposition of the classical plane section hypothesis. Transverse strains are internal variables determined by imposing equilibrium between concrete and vertical steel stirrups. The finite element model was validated through a correlation study with an experimentally tested reinforced concrete wall. The result shows that the most of the energy is dissipated by flexural bars at the bottom extremities, lower level of displacement ductility and energy dissipation are observed with the shear critical walls than the flexural critical walls.