STUDY OF VARIATION OF STRESS CONCENTRATION IN COMPOUND SHEAR WALL

Abstract

It has been established in past that the location of stress concentration in any structure is often the point where failure occurs or it serves as site for start of propagation leading to failure. This phenomenon when tested on non-planar shear wall (T-shape, L-shape etc.) has been found correct. In an experiment done by Inada, 2008 [10]when load was applied on L- shape shear walls with help of jacks in laboratory and dynamic loading conditions were established, it was found that wall failed at the junction point where stress concentration is expected to occur. There is no clause present in Indian codes which deals with design and detailing recommendations for compound shear wall (except for boundary zone). The Uniform Building Code (UBC 1997) offers only limited guidance for the design and detailing of shear walls of compound configurations in plan. The present study has been done keeping this in mind so that few practical suggestions can be put forward regarding design of compound shear wall. Study of compound shear wall has been done with objective of studying the effect of shear concentration at re-entrant corners. Models are prepared in the software SAP2000 and the analysis has been done to obtain the values of stress at corner point. Length of flange, thickness of wall and height of building is varied and variation of shear stress at corner point is studied. Values of stress has been plotted against ratio of length of wall to thickness of wall keeping the height of building constant and it has been observed that they follow a particular pattern. It can be said that the length to thickness ratio of shear walls should be such that stress at the re-entrant corner is minimal to avoid failure of the structure.