Strengthening of low-rise RC shear walls subjected to lateral loads with openings exist

The use of the carbon fiber reinforced polymer cfrp strips and the steel plates jacketing are recently used for strengthening the low-rise composite reinforced concrete rc shear walls for improving their seismic behaviors under the effect of lateral loads. a finite element fem model has been incorporated by the author using ansys 9 finite element program for simulating the rc shear walls using solid65 element representing the concrete sections having smeared reinforcement distribution and using solid46 element to represent cfrp laminates,while using solid45 element to represent steel plates jacketing sections. the obtained failure load and maximum horizontal deflection results have been compared with other experimental and fe model results using ansys software. the obtained results show a success for the proposed model. a parametric study has been done by the author on choosing strengthening thicknesses with various locations on the shear wall surface for obtaining the failure behavior and the best strengthening locations. this study has been done also on the two storey shear walls with the same reinforcement. the influences of openings in the concrete and steel failure results have,been' investigated also by the author,showing a significant effect compared with the case of wall without openings.