Perforation Effect on the Hysteretic Response of Coupled Shear Walls

Coupled walls are known as efficient lateral load resisting systems. Recently by changing the design codes from strength based design to performance based design, better nonlinear performance of coupling wall systems (CWS) is needed. In order to evaluate the seismic performance of a structure, nonlinear analysis is carried out by many researchers, nonlinear dynamic analysis is one of the newest ones used. The outcome of this analysis is a hysteretic response known as hysteresis loop which indicates the nonlinear behavior of the structure under monotonic loadings. In this study nonlinear dynamic analysis is carried out by SAP2000 S/W in order to evaluate seismic performance of 2D frames. These 2D frames are part of 20, 30 and 40 story buildings which are located in a high seismic zone, the records of El-Centro earthquake is chosen for the nonlinear time history analysis of the frames. The hysteresis response is obtained for all of the patterns, and then the walls on both sides are perforated according to three patterns, chess, rhombic and rectangular. The results of hysteretic response confirm that the perforation, gives better response to the coupling wall systems under monotonic loadings, by using changes the behavior of coupling wall systems from flexural to shear