In-Plane Shear-Wall Configuration Effects on the Seismic Performance of Symmetrical Multistory Reinforced-Concrete Buildings

Shear walls, which are vertical elements with significantly high stiffness values, are becoming more and more popular and are widely used as primary lateral-load-resisting systems for reinforced-concrete (RC) buildings of various heights to ensure satisfactory performance. This study is thus devoted to assessing the performance of RC buildings with shear walls of different locations and configurations under the effect of seven different earthquake motions representing near‐source records. The buildings were designed to fit regions of medium seismicity following the ASCE 7–10 design requirements. Finite-element models were developed with shear walls, distributed over either the outer panel, the intermediate panel, or the center of the building. The seismic assessment of the developed building models was performed using dynamic nonlinear time–history analysis employing the selected full set of records. The results from the analysis clarified that the configuration and location of shear walls tend to significantly affect the induced story seismic responses. More specifically, building models with central core system, Configuration 7, provide the highest seismic responses among all other building models with about 50% which may lead to cost-effective earthquake-resistant design. From base shear design point of view, the use of shear walls distributed as parallel pairs along either the peripheral or the intermediate panel, Configurations 3 and 6, are the advantageous where they substantially reduce base shear by at least 33.20% among all other configurations.