An investigation into crack and its growth on the seismic behavior of steel shear walls

Numerical investigations carried out into the effect of crack and its growth on the seismic behavior of steel shear walls are presented in this paper. Twenty two steel shear walls with initial central or edge crack were modeled using general purpose finite element programs of ANSYS and ABAQUS. The numerical method used in this study is extended finite element method based on cohesive crack approach. Static and quasi-static analyses were done to evaluate the effect of crack and its growth on lateral behavior of system. Both nonlinearities of material and geometry were considered. As there is no experimental study on the cracked steel shear wall system in the literature, only the finite element modeling assumptions and process were validated using some useful laboratory tests. According to the obtained load-displacement curves, central cracks are more critical than edge cracks and have a great impact on the strength and energy absorption of shear wall system. The results show that long central cracks cause the system fails in a brittle manner. In addition, the response modification factors of steel shear walls in the presence of cracks with different lengths were calculated.