Abstract

In this work, the behavior of slender reinforced concrete (rc) walls with different types of discontinuities at the base, under cyclic lateral loading, are experimentally and numerically studied. First, the experimental results of a series of tests of rc walls with setbacks and central openings at the first floor are presented. Second, a robust quadrilateral element with 3 degrees of freedom (dof), 2 displacement and 1 in-plane rotation per node, and a transversal section made of a layered system of fully bonded, nonlinear smeared steel reinforcement and smeared orthotropic concrete material based on a rotating-angle approach, to represent the behavior of rc walls, is reviewed. Finally, the comparison of the experimental results with numerical models of the walls using the robust quadrilateral element is presented. It is observed that the model is able to capture in a good way the global and local response.