Evaluation of behavior of reinforced concrete shear wall with irregular opening due to near-fault earthquake

The increasing need for tall buildings seems to be more prominent than ever with the growth of urbanization and the reduction of urban space. The seismic performance of tall buildings against earthquake and wind forces is known as their main feature. Therefore, these structures should benefit from sufficient strength and rigidity against these forces. Shear wall is recognized as one of the solutions for the stability of the structures against earthquake and wind forces. In this paper, two 5- and 10-story buildings were designed in ETABS software, and shear walls were modeled in Abaqus software to gain a comprehensive understanding of the behavior of shear walls with irregular openings under near-fault earthquakes. The examined structure is built in the city of Tehran with high seismicity. The height of the stories is 3.2 m in both models. The soil type, the design basic acceleration, and the importance factor of the structure were set at types II, 0.35, and 1, respectively. The structure has a system in two directions (medium reinforced concrete bending frame + special reinforced concrete shear wall). The response modification coefficient, deflection amplification factor, and over strength factor are equal to 6.5, 5, and 2.5, respectively. Aguda and Arabzadeh laboratory models were then used for validation. The results of changing the position parameters and the dimensions of openings revealed that the base shear, relative displacement, and absorbed energy increased for both models by increasing the horizontal distance between the two openings. The 10-story model showed more reduction in the base shear than the 5-story model upon creating an opening at the wall base. The base shear of the 5-story model increased by eliminating the opening on the first story, but it barely affected the 10-story model. In the largest opening area, the base shear exhibited a much smaller decrease in the sample with different opening widths than that with different opening heights.