Performance of fiber beam–column elements in the seismic analysis of a lightly reinforced shear wall

This work investigates the capability of two different fiber beam–column finite elements in simulating the dynamic response of a shear wall tested on a shaking table. The two elements account for the axial force-bending moment interaction in a comparable way. The first element can be considered as representative of a class of elements widely available to design engineers for nonlinear (either static or dynamic) analyses. The second element is more refined (and complex) and is specifically derived to reproduce the shear–flexure interaction. The specimen under study is one of the two 5-story, 1/3rd-scale, reinforced concrete (R/C) shear walls, which was subjected to a sequence of accelerograms during the CAMUS I program. The wall was designed according to the French code PS92 and is representative of large lightly reinforced walls, as defined in the Eurocode 8 standard. The measured response is used to assess the benefits and limitations of all the proposed structural models and the adopted finite element formulations; the relevant effects of shear in the response of the specimen are addressed and discussed. Important recommendations on the use of fiber beam–column elements for studying existing R/C structures, which do not comply with the flexure dominated paradigm of walls in the most recent code specifications, are provided.

► Numerical simulation of shaking table response of a lightly reinforced shear wall.
► Capability of two fiber beam–column elements to model the R/C wall.
► The efficiency of a flexure–shear element for this shear wall has been proved.
► The use of a standard Bernoulli flexure fiber model is not recommended.
► Intermediate performance of flexure elements in series with shear nonlinear springs.