ABSTRACT

In contrast to buildings stiffened exclusively by moment-resisting frames, where storey drifts exhibit large variations, shear walls acting as a "stiff backbone" ensure a much more uniform storey drift distribution and also a marked reduction of its magnitude. The price to be paid is, however, a higher risk of non-ductile failure modes due to shear, since maximum shear forces in a structural wall with given moment capacity can considerably surpass the values predicted by linear analysis. While much useful information can be extracted from nonlinear analyses of simple beam-like shear-wall models, full three-dimensional computer models are needed if the damage evolution under given excitations is to be accurately simulated.