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.
