Stochastic response analysis of visco-elastic slit shear walls

Slit shear walls an reinforced concrete shear wall structures with purposely built-in vertical slits. If the slits are inserted with visco-elastic damping materials, the shear walls will become viscoelastic sandwich beams. When adequately designed, this kind of structures can be quite effective in resisting earthquake loads. Herein, a simple analysis method is developed for the evaluation of the stochastic responses of visco-elastic slit shear walls. In the proposed method, the stiffness and mass matrices are derived by using Rayleigh-Ritz method, and the responses of the structures are calculated by means of complex modal analysis. Apart from slit shear walls, this analysis method is also applicable to coupled shear walls and cantilevered sandwich beams. Numerical examples are presented and the results clearly show that the seismic responses of shear wall structures can be substantially reduced by incorporating vertical slits into the walls and inserting visco-elastic damping materials into the slits.