Parametric Study for Performance of R.C. Wall with Opening using Analytical F.E. Model

Earthquake is a catastrophic event, which makes enormous harm to properties and human lives. R.C. walls are provided in structures to decrease horizontal displacements under seismic load. R.C walls in residential buildings might have openings that are required for windows, doors or different states of openings due to architectural purposes. Size, position, and area of openings may fluctuate from an engineering perspective and might have an impact on stiffness of R.C wall and on the structures seismic reaction. F.E. modeling approach has been conducted to study effects of opening shape, size and position in RC wall with different thicknesses under axial & lateral static loads. F.E. Method using “ANSYS” becomes an essential approach in analyzing civil engineering problems numerically. Now we can make various models with different parameters in short time by using ANSYS instead of examining it experimentally, which consumes much time and money. The proposed F.E approach has been verified with experimental programs conducted by other researchers and gives a perfect correlation between the model and experimental outputs including load capacity, failure mode, crack pattern and lateral displacement. A parametric study is applied to investigate effects of opening size, shape, orientation, aspect ratio, position with different R.C. wall thicknesses. After verifying the proposed F.E approach with other mathematical design models conducted by other researchers, a statistical analysis was performed on 38 F.E. specimens and is presented in this paper. Outcomes of this statistical analysis provide an overview of the performance of current design models and identify research gaps. The findings presented herein will be used to define a new mathematical formula to provide the ultimate axial load of R.C. wall with circular opening. This research may be useful for improving existing design models and to be applied in practice, as it satisfies both architectural and structural requirements.