Modelling and analysis issues in assessing the performance of R/C shear walls

CD Rom Paper, ID 50. Abstract: This paper presents the structural modelling of one of the two 5-story, 1/3rd scale, R/C shear walls tested on a shaking table for the CAMUS Program and the analysis issues related to the reproduction of the experimental results. Two models were set up for the wall, at different levels of refinements: the micro scale of finite elements (FE) and the meso scale of a fibre model. Both models have been subjected to a non-linear push-over monotonic analysis within a displacement-based assessment; a dynamic step-by-step analysis has been performed only at the meso-scale. The comparison of numerical and experimental results provides useful indications about the modelling approaches to be adopted in predicting the non linear seismic response through simplified procedures, pointing out that modelling and analysis problems can not be faced separately.