Hysteresis Behavior of Reinforced Concrete Walls

Reinforced concrete walls are the primary lateral load-resisting systems in numerous multistory buildings and nuclear structures located in seismically active regions. Hence, hysteresis behavior prediction of structural walls is of utmost importance in the context of seismic analysis and design. A hysteresis model of reinforced concrete walls, capable of producing requisite structural degradation and pinching characteristics, has been proposed in this research on the basis of the Bouc-Wen-Baber-Noori model. The Livermore solver for ordinary differential equations (LSODE) and genetic algorithms have been used for solving the differential equations and identifying the analytical parameters associated with the model, respectively. A database of wall specimens tested under cyclic loading has been accumulated from literature to successfully calibrate the analytical response with the experimental results. Subsequently, the relationship between the structural features and the model parameters is resolved based on the wall database by regression analysis. Moreover, to facilitate structural analysis of wall-dominant buildings using the proposed approach, the hysteresis model has been effectively implemented as a user element in the form of a pair of diagonal springs in ABAQUS. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.