Shear Wall

In the 21st century, there is the tremendous growth in the infrastructure development like construction of buildings, bridges and industries etc. in the developing countries, especially India. Now-a-days the population is increasing and to meet their requirements this infrastructure development is on demand. Since the township land is limited, there is a scarcity of land in urban cities. To overcome this issue, tall and slender multi-story buildings are constructed all around the world. Tall buildings can perform a multiple functions such as office, apartment or shopping centre within a single high-rise tower. But there is a high possibility that such structures are subjected to huge lateral loads. These lateral loads are produced either due to wind blowing against the building or due to inertia forces induced by ground shaking (excitation) which tends to snap the building in shear and push it over in bending, In the framed buildings, the vertical loads are resisted by frames only; however, the infill wall panels provide the lateral resistance. For the framed buildings taller than 10-stories, the frame action obtained by the interaction of slabs and columns is not adequate to give required lateral stiffness. Hence the framed structures become an uneconomical solution for tall buildings. The lateral forces caused due to wind as well as earthquake are generally resisted by the use of shear wall system, which is one of the best methods to maintain the lateral stability of tall buildings. Using shear walls for lateral load resistant elements in tall buildings up to thirty storey is widespread. Shear walls may be provided either in one plane or in both planes. The typical shear wall system with shear walls located in both the planes and subjected to lateral loads. In such cases, the columns are intended to resist only the gravity loads. The shear walls can resist large lateral loads (due to earthquake or wind) that may strike “in-plane” and “out-of-plane” to the wall. The shear wall’s in-plane shear resistance can be estimated by subjecting the wall to the lateral loads. On the other side, the flexural capacity of the shear wall can be predicted by subjecting it to the out-of-plane lateral loads    The past study shows that the shear wall buildings exhibit excellent performance during the severe ground motion due to stiff behavior at service loads and ductile behavior at higher loads, thus preventing the significant damage to the RC buildings. By monitoring the deflected shape of the shear wall, its behavior can be ascertained well. The deflected shape of the short shear walls is dominated by the shear and the deflected shape of the tall shear walls is dominated by flexure