Seismic performance of concrete-shear-wall buildings in India

The Indian seismic design code, like most of the other national codes worldwide, is based on a prescriptive-force-based design methodology. In the present study, seismic performance and fragility of reinforced-concrete frame shear-wall buildings designed for Indian codes are investigated using the displacement-based design methodology of ASCE 41 and capacity spectrum approach of HAZUS, respectively. Equivalent-frame and finite-element models for simulating the non-linear behaviour of reinforced concrete shear walls are validated using experimental results available in literature, and used to simulate the non-linear behaviour of two representative 15-storey concrete-frame buildings with concrete shear walls. The capacity curves, obtained using a non-linear static procedure, are used to estimate the seismic performance and fragility of the buildings. The derived damage probabilities are compared with those available for bare and masonry-infilled concrete-frame buildings designed using the same codes. It is observed that both equivalent-frame and finite-element models predict strength capacities in close agreement with the experimental results, but the equivalent-frame model produces slightly conservative estimates of the deformation capacity. Further, both concrete-shear-wall buildings exhibit similar probabilities of different damage grades, which are slightly lower compared to the frame buildings without concrete shear walls designed using the same codes.