Simulation of the shaking table test of a seven-story shear wall building

• Published in: Earthquake engineering & structural dynamics 2009-04, Vol.38 (5), p.587-607
• Main Authors: Martinelli, Paolo, Filippou, Filip C.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: fiber beam-column element; R/C shear wall; shaking table
• ISSN: 0098-8847; 1096-9845
• DOI: 10.1002/eqe.897

This paper presents the simulation of the nonlinear dynamic response of a full‐scale seven‐story reinforced concrete shear wall shaking table specimen under base excitations representing four earthquake records of increasing intensity. The study was motivated by the participation in the blind prediction contest of the shaking table specimen organized by University of California at San Diego (UCSD), NEES, and Portland Cement Association (PCA). Owing to the time constraints of the contest a relatively simple two‐dimensional (2d) model was used for the shear wall specimen. In this model, the shear wall was represented by 2d beam–column elements with fiber discretization of the cross‐section that account for the interaction of the axial force with the bending moment. Upon conclusion of the contest, the available experimental measurements permitted a thorough examination of the analytical results. While the measured data confirmed the excellent accuracy of the model predictions, some limitations also became apparent. The paper addresses the benefits and limitations of the selected modeling strategy and investigates the sensitivity of this type of model to parameter selection. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.