STRUCTURAL BEHAVIOR OF AXIALLY LOADED SHEAR WALLS WITH OPENINGS

The main objective of this paper is to study the structural behavior of axially loaded shear wall with openings. The study is an experimental work through casting and testing of twenty six SCC shear walls with and without openings. Three variables are considered in this study, slenderness ratio, opening size and skew angle of opening. The specimens were divided in to five groups according to their parameters. The experimental results show that the slenderness ratio has a large effect on the structural behavior of the shear wall, especially shear walls with opening. The ultimate load is increased by 50% when the thickness of specimen increases from 100mm to 150 mm, while 90% rate of increasing in ultimate load was observed in specimens with openings when the wall thickness increased from 100mm to 150mm. Also, the results show that the opening is the main reason of decreasing the ultimate load in shear walls; the ultimate load of specimens is decreased by 40% when the opening size increases from 3% to 8%. The effect of skew angle is lower than the effect of size of openings. Cracks of specimens with small size openings start from the corner of the opening and propagated toward the support and loading area. While the cracks of specimens with large size of openings start from the corner of the opening and grow toward the nearest edge.