Influence of openings in shear wall on lateral load carrying capacity of rc frame systems

Shear walls are specially designed as structural walls included in the buildings to withstand horizontal forces induced by wind and earthquake. Among the factors which affect the capacity of seismic response of reinforced concrete (RC) shear walls, an important role is played by openings. In many shear walls, a regular pattern of openings has to be provided due to various functional requirements such as windows in external walls, doors, corridors in internal walls and service ducts. The scope of the present study was to investigate the influence of the various size of openings in the shear wall on the nonlinear static and dynamic responses of RC buildings. For this, as a case study, the three-dimensional (3D) model and analysis of the 5 story RC shear wall buildings with 3 bays in x-direction and 5 bays in y-direction were carried out by using ETABS 2015 software. The comparative results were obtained in terms of capacity curve, displacement, storey drift, displacement time history, and base shear time history. Results revealed that openings with an area up to 11.1% of the wall area yielded minor effects on the seismic response of RC wall-frame structural systems but higher opening ratios eventually resulted in reducing the overall performance of the case study structures.