Earthquake Response of RC Coupled Shear Walls Strengthened with Thin Composite Plates

This paper deal with the seismic analysis of reinforced concrete (RC) coupled shear wall structures strengthened by bonded composite plates. In the analytical formulation of the present study, the adherent and the adhesive layers are modeled as shear wall elements, using the mixed finite element method. In the validation process of the proposal model, static and free vibration analyses of coupled shear walls are firstly studied. Comparisons with theoretical results reported in the literature are made and good agreement is observed. After this stage, numerical results are presented that relate to the performance of RC coupled shear walls bonded with composite plates under several different earthquake scenarios, in which an RC coupled shear wall strengthened by steel plates is treated as a limiting case.