Evaluation of plastic hinge length in RC shear wall connected with floor slabs

Traditionally, seismic design focuses on inelastic behavior at the base of isolated shear walls. Yet, in multistoried RC wall-frame buildings with interconnected shear walls and floor slabs, significant inelasticity occurs at wall-slab junctions. This interaction greatly enhances the structure's seismic capacity. Previous studies overlooked this interaction, concentrating instead on isolated walls. The extent of inelastic action in a wall connected with floor slabs has not been studied extensively in the past. In the present study, the extent of the zone of inelastic behavior is studied at the wall-slab junction region by carrying out displacement based nonlinear static analysis of the wall-slab assemblages under monotonic as well as cyclic loads. A parametric study is carried out by varying the wall panel aspect ratio and axial load on walls. It is observed that this interaction using nonlinear static analysis, revealing increased curvature demand and localized damages at the junctions. It is observed that the extent of tensile damage at the junction region remains consistent across different axial load levels at the maximum drift level. Analytical expressions for plastic hinge length are proposed, crucial for refining seismic design strategies. The plastic hinge equation derived from pushover analysis yields values approximately 1.34 times higher than those obtained from cyclic loading.