Effects of Continuity between Steel Boundary Element and Concrete on Behavior of Shear Wall

Structural walls are widely used in building structures as the major structural members to provide substantial lateral strength, stiffness and the inelastic deformation capacity needed to withstand earthquake ground motions. In this article the behavior of composite shear walls with continuous boundary elements are compared and contrasted with a state in which the wall’s boundary elements are discontinuous and interrupted and the boundary steel columns are connected to the foundation through the column’s baseplate and bolts; and these are all to assess and appraise some hypotheses by the structural designers in designing these walls. The finite element software is first calibrated and the accuracy of its results is validated through modeling the experimental samples. In this research, the concrete’s nonlinear finite element analysis method and concrete damage plasticity model have been used for the concrete’s behavior modeling. The results of this study indicate that the wall boundary elements’ continuity improve the composite shear walls’ behavior. Meanwhile, this effect increases by an increase in the number of the wall’s floors.