Seismic shear force magnification in RC cantilever structural walls, designed according to Eurocode 8

The paper contains a discussion of the inelastic dynamic magnification of seismic shear forces in cantilever walls with rectangular cross-sections. An extensive parametric study was performed in order to determine the reliability of the procedure in Eurocode 8 (EC8). A large number of single cantilever walls which are characteristic for the design practice in Europe and designed to satisfy all the EC8 requirements were analysed. The results obtained with the (modified) code procedures were compared with the results of inelastic response history analyses. If properly applied, the EC8 procedure for DCH walls usually yields good results for the base shears. However, as presently formulated and understood in the EC8, it can yield significantly incorrect results (overestimations of up to 40%). For this reason three modifications were introduced: (1) Keintzel’s formula, which is adopted in EC8, should be used in combination with the seismic shears obtained by considering the first mode of the excitation only; (2) the upper limit of the shear magnification factor should be related to the total shear force; and (3) a variable shear magnification factor along the height of the wall should be applied. The present procedure in EC8 for DCM structures (using a constant shear magnification factor of 1.5 for all walls) is non-conservative. For DCM walls it is strongly recommended that the same procedure as required for DCH walls be used.