A Finite Element Method to Identify Damages in Reinforced Concrete Shear Walls with Openings

Reinforced concrete (RC) shear walls are among the most important structural elements in a concrete or steel made building. In some cases, due to mechanical and architectural reasons, the RC shear walls need to have some openings. These walls are vulnerable to seismic loads and should be monitored all the time to detect their initial cracks and damages. In this paper, a Finite Element Method (FEM) was utilized to detect the damages of the numerical model of two RC shear walls with an opening. The results showed that the proposed FEM technique is capable of identifying the location and severity of different damages in the numerical model.

Keywords:

Finite Element Method (FEM) , RC Shear Wall , Openings , Damage identification.