Medium-rise reinforced concrete (RC) framed apartment complexes with stories ranging from 15 to 50 are becoming more common in Ethiopia’s main cities.
In these RC-framed structures, shear walls are included for lateral load resistance. As apertures are frequently provided in shear walls, it is critical to evaluate their influence on story drift, stiffness, shear and moments, and stress within the shear walls.
A 3D study with five different cases was carried out with ETABS version 19.00 software to investigate the influence of apertures in a building’s shear wall.
This study looks at the effects of changing the size and location of these apertures. Based on this analysis, extensive data were acquired, and useful conclusions were formed that will be useful to practicing engineers.
The seismic parameter utilized for the response spectrum study was Building Code of Ethiopia ES8-15, which conforms to Eurocode 8-2004 seismic code guidelines (based on EN1998-1) with target response spectrum type-I.
The following parameters were used: ground acceleration, ag/g = 0.1, spectrum type = I, ground type = B, soil factor, S = 1.35, spectrum period, Tb, = 0.05 s, spectrum period, Tc = 0.25 s, spectrum period, Td = 1.2 s, lower bound factor, beta = 0.2, behavior factor = 1, and damping ratio = 5%.
The outcomes are compared using various parameters such as displacement, story drift, story stiffness, story shear, and story moment both with and without shear wall opening cases.
This study will give tremendous insight into the effect of shear wall openings on the performance of the structure.
The analysis in this work was carried out on a linear model, which may not represent the complete local response of the structure; thus, future researchers should perform nonlinear analysis based on a performance-based design.
It was concluded from this investigation that incorporating shear walls considerably enhanced the performance of the building over framed structures.
Shear wall openings in a structure have a significant influence on the building’s performance.
Due to their significant resistance to earthquake forces, shear wall structures are highly recommended for seismic hazard zones.