Concepts and Measures for Improving Seismic Performance of Reinforced Concrete Shear Wall

In tall buildings the reinforced concrete(RC)shear wall is one of the predominant structural components used to resist earthquakes.Because shear walls located on the bottom zone of high-rise buildings are subjected to large axial load, shear force and moment during severe earthquakes,the shear failure or crushing of concrete usually occurs in the bottom zone of walls, and such failure mode is irreparable. Therefore,the improvement of seismic performance of RC walls at the bottom is one of the key issues of seismic design of high-rise building structures.The observed damage of RC walls in Chile earthquake(2010)and New Zealand(2011)are firstly introduced in the paper,and correlated factors which likely result in the failure of walls are analyzed.Based on the detailed assessment of seismic behavior of RC walls,concepts and measures for improving the seismic performance of RC walls are then suggested.Meanwhile,due to the increasing use of the steel plate-reinforced concrete composite shear wall(SPRCW)in super tall buildings currently,the parametric analyses of this novel structural member are carried out by numerical analysis. The numerical results indicate that, compared with the conventional RC shear walls,the embedded steel plate can efficiently improve the behavior bearing the compressive force,the load carrying capacity,ductility and energy dissipation capacity, resulting in the significant improvement of the seismic performance of RC walls.