Design methods for apartment buildings with thin concrete shear walls

Abstract

Economizing the construction cost is a strict demand of the current economic environment. Many structural engineers, practicing and academics; are actively involved in finding a favourable solution for this problem through experiments and researches. Many countries like Chile, Malaysia etc. have obtained good results. Thin concrete shear wall structures shade some light on this as most apartments for low and medium income groups should have symmetrical arrangement of lateral walls. This system is somewhat new to Sri Lanka but, could be very useful. Properly designed and detailed buildings with shear walls have shown overwhelming performance in past earthquakes occurred in different parts of the world. Shear walls in high seismic regions require special detailing. However, in past earthquakes, even buildings with sufficient amount of walls that have not been specially detailed for seismic performance (but had enough well distributed reinforcements), had saved from collapse. Shear walls are easy to construct; reinforcement detailing is relatively straight forward; repetitive construction; therefore shear walls are efficient both in terms of construction cost and effectiveness in minimizing earthquake damage in structural and non-structural elements. The objectives of the thesis are to assess the suitability of thin concrete shear wall structures for medium and 'low income group apartments, to check the feasibility with respect to economy, to optimize the thickness of shear walls, to assess ongoing building projects, and to check the suitability of thin shear wall structures in case of seismic (earthquake) loads. Methodology to achieve these objectives is the use of detailed literature survey, assessing code provisions, cost implications, establishing a finite element model, structural designs to British Standards, and comparison with other forms. It is concluded that apartment buildings with thin concrete shear walls are comparatively economical with other forms.